Alleged arsonist ‘upset with ex-girlfriend’ started fatal Columbus fire, cops say
Val Almonord did not get the answer he had waited months to hear.
After a hearing Monday for the man accused of setting a March 4 fire that killed his son Valburn Almonord Jr., the father still was left with the question he’d been asking since he heard the news: Why?
“I would like to know why someone set the house on fire like that,” he had asked in a March interview with the Ledger-Enquirer.
A police detective’s testimony Thursday in the murder case against Richard L. Jernigan Jr., 19, did not answer that.
Initially charged with first-degree arson and second-degree criminal damage to property, Jernigan was jailed on March 4, just hours after the fire was reported around 10:30 a.m. in a two-story house at 1601 14th Ave. in Columbus, where the victim was pronounced dead at 2:45 p.m.
Jernigan was being held on bonds totaling more than $200,000 when Sgt. Donna Baker added charges of murder and methamphetamine possession on Tuesday, after investigators got autopsy results showing Almonord Jr. died from burns and from inhaling smoke and soot.
Baker said that when police responded to the blaze, Jernigan ran from them, tossing aside a black backpack containing a gram of methamphetamine worth $100. Officers caught him after a brief chase, and he admitted setting the fire after they read him his rights, she said.
The house that burned belonged to Jernigan’s family, she said.
Representing Jernigan, public defender Gracie Ham asked the question that had so nagged at the victim’s father: Did Jernigan give any motive for setting the fire?
“What I was told was he was upset with his ex-girlfriend at the time,” Baker answered.
The girlfriend had been living in the house, where the victim also had been staying, authorities said.
But Almonord Jr.’s living there was his only connection to Jernigan, Baker said: She had no evidence that the two men knew each other.
That explanation was not enough for the senior Almonord, who spoke to reporters after the hearing.
“Is that a reason, you’re upset at your girlfriend, to go around killing people?” he asked. “That’s kind of strange. I don’t understand why this happened. Nobody has given me a reason whatsoever.... I asked around. No one can say, ‘Yes, this is why it happened.’”
That the two men had no obvious personal dispute was baffling, he said: “They are neither friend nor enemy. They don’t know each other, never had any contact, never met.”
Jernigan now is being held without bond, on his murder charge. Recorder’s Court Judge Julius Hunter set a bond of $5,000 on the methamphetamine charge and sent the case to Muscogee Superior Court. At Ham’s request, the judge also ordered a mental and physical health evaluation for Jernigan.
‘My son and my buddy’
The victim’s 79-year-old father, a retired podiatrist and Democratic candidate for Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District, said he has warm memories of his lost son, the middle child among five siblings.
“I will always remember him for the rest of my life. He was my son and my buddy,” the father said Thursday.
He recalled their occasional outings together: “I love fishing, for example. Many times he’d say, ‘Pop, let’s go out fishing.’ We’d go out, we’d go fishing, and enjoy a good time.”
The son had not told his family he was staying at the 16th Street house, said the father, who didn’t know why the junior Almonord was there: “Why there? I have no idea.... That was a shock to me.”
His son’s death spawned an outpouring of tributes from friends who left flowers, candles, photographs and balloons outside the burned building that later was demolished, the fire having left it dangerously unstable.
Firefighters extinguishing the blaze found Almonord’s body on the first floor of the house, on the south side that faces 16th Street, where Muscogee County Coroner Buddy Bryan pronounced him dead.
Almonord, 47, had been living in a room on the second floor, Bryan said. He had injured his ankle and missed work that day.
Columbus Fire Marshal John Shull said the house was a total loss. Investigators estimated the building’s value at $50,000, and the value of the contents lost at $10,000.
Shull said the investigation is ongoing, and no details on how the fire started were available yet.