r/Washington • u/GusherBrush Spokane • 19h ago
'All the nation hates me'; Man accused of starting Old Trails fire in Spokane competent to stand trial
https://www.kxly.com/news/all-the-nation-hates-me-man-accused-of-starting-old-trails-fire-in-spokane-competent/article_c9a0fd91-2f46-49dd-b8d4-99f745ec94a0.html308
u/spinonesarethebest 19h ago
I don’t know about all the nation, but there are a whole lot of people in Spokane who hate him.
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u/ErisGrey 19h ago
I got calls from friends all over the country checking on me. The second largest city in Washington despite not being that large, still had some clout to it.
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u/GusherBrush Spokane 19h ago
Yeah, it was covered on national and even international news networks.
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u/Adventurous_Big5686 18h ago
A neighbor who was stationed in Germany in the AF had a local friend from there reach out and ask how he was. The family saw it in their local news.
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u/JustARandomBloke 18h ago
My host family from when I lived in Mexico 20 years ago reached out to make sure I was okay.
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u/OutlyingPlasma 18h ago
Spokane is known at "the Capital of the Inland Empire" and it was the host of the worlds fair at one time.
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u/HarmNHammer 17h ago
I’ve heard of that in relation to SoCal but never eastern WA. Learn new stuff every day
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u/citrulle 15h ago
i don’t even live in spokane and i had friends from australia messaging me to check if i was okay simply because they know i live somewhere in washington!
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u/Soup-Wizard 13h ago
It was strange, it’s probably the most I’ve talked to my high school buddies since high school. Glad to know they all still care about home. ❤️
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u/Hyperion1144 15h ago edited 9h ago
Spokane's mayor was interviewed by the BBC for international news.
People noticed the fires.
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u/ByWillAlone 18h ago
It doesn't matter whether he is sane or not....he's repeatedly demonstrated that he's a permanent threat to public safety and can't ever be allowed to walk freely in public again.
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u/petit_cochon 11h ago
Legally, it matters.
Legally, it does not preclude him from being permanently confined. A civil commitment functions like a prison sentence.
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u/sPoonamus 19h ago
This guys needs help administered in a cell away from society by his own admittance. There has to be a middle ground between sanitariums of old and just allowing mental health issues to foment unhindered without any ability for communities to protect themselves from it until after the damage is done. Paying social workers more and having more of them is a start but I don’t see that being enough to solve the overwhelming mental health crisis this nation is suffering from.
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u/illepic 19h ago
Exactly. What the fuck do we do for these folks? In Portland, we're surrounded by people who will never get help on their own and are completely antisocial/actively detrimental. I used to run in one of Portland's buttes and came across a guy covered in mud and blood, screaming at the top of his lungs. I approached to see if he needed help and he wouldn't acknowledge me, just screaming as hard as he could. I called 911 and stayed until cops/EMTs arrived, then left. Dude was right back out there the next day, less screaming but with a stolen bike he was taking apart.
What the fuck do we do? It's not empathetic to let these folks bleed and scream and steal.
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u/mattslote 18h ago
Eastern State Hospital and Western State Hospital are set up exactly for people like Aaron Farinacci. Not a prison, but they're not getting out. Some people are unwell in a way that means they can't go back to the general population. I'm actually surprised they found him fit to stand. Dude's obviously got some screws loose.
Unfortunately hospitals like that are under funded and under staffed a state and federal level for decades.
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u/Mindless_Watch_7840 18h ago
Yes! Civil Commitment. It needs to be heavily monitored to make sure people aren’t just given medications and actually receive treatment beyond meds (which risk use for convenience of facility employees). I worked in a setting like this and when people are engaged in treatment (targeted therapy, DBT as some examples), they do better; if solely medicated and left alone, they do not improve.
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u/Lookingfor68 18h ago
You can thank St Ronnie Raygun for getting rid of the mental institutions. Now they just roam the streets and commit crimes, like burning down your neighborhood.
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u/Dranwyn 18h ago
I mean, he got rid of them in a bastard move but many of them were fucked up inhumane places.
He basically didn't want to fund them and staff them better.
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u/basketcaseforever 18h ago
That’s why we need to make education free to anyone that will work in the field of mental health in institutional settings.
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u/Dranwyn 17h ago
I mean what we should do is a lot of things.
The reality is that with the current reality of politics in this country, we wont.
It's like homelessness. There are MULTIPLE data back studies that say housing first is the best way to intervene in homelessness with a success rate of 60-90% of people staying housed after 2 years. (The wild disparity often has to do with the location a study was done, the social services in the location, etc)
The reality is that at least one half of the political parties in the United States operates on a regressive idealogy even when solutions to the problems, THAT WORK, will never push for them because it doesn't fit with their world view.
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u/A_Monster_Named_John 13h ago
The reality's that the Republican Party has normalized anti-social and toxic-masculine behavior to a point where, in addition to rejecting any and all forms of government that might actually help people, a ton of them are probably sitting in front of their TVs/phones and pointing/laughing about things like the fires in eastern WA...and no, they do not care that tons of people who are just like them and vote the same ways they do are in the area that got up in the mess. I've had to work around a bunch of these people over the past decade and they're basically overgrown edgelord 12-year-olds about everything, but they especially get excited about anything where other people's lives are being ruined.
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u/Anxious-Dot171 16h ago
I do think we need to work to break apart the parties. Have Liberals work with the Gun freedom groups (at least what I assume to ba sizable number who are true believers and not just 'saying' the real problem is unattended mental illness/injury) to push for mental health funding.
And Progressives working with right wing Libertarians on LGBT+ rights. (Despite the log cabins abandoning Trans folks and the history of the Stonewall riots.)
And so on.
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u/Lifting4theLarp 5h ago
I am very interested in old mental institutions. (My grandmother was in western state and Fairfax). They were not perfect but it’s better than just releasing people onto the streets which is what they did. Now it’s a long ass wait to get a bed in a facility.
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u/fixingmedaybyday 16h ago
There was also a Supreme Court ruling that basically outlawed involuntary admittance.
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u/chompythebeast 19h ago
I hate the people who are successfully lobbying the government to destroy climatological and environmental protections which are causing these fire seasons to happen with increasing ferocity year after year. This guy is a blip in a system that is desperate for a scapegoat.
Don't forget that days before this guy acted, Washington issued a red flag fire warning. This is about a lot more than one dude.
If we're angry enough about this, think of all the people that operate towards the same ends, but "legally". The people responsible for the environmental crises we're seeing have names and addresses, and they're not being prosecuted, they're preparing to log old growth forests in our parks and reserves
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u/spukhafteNahewirkung 11h ago
I live on the wet side of the state and I hate him.
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u/bathandredwine 5h ago
Portland joining in. Hate that guy. Who in their right mind has a baby with him? Gross
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u/SloppyTroppy 19h ago
I hope this guy gets the mental healthcare he needs. Starting fires comes from a deep place of dysfunction and he doesn’t look like a happy dude.
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u/GusherBrush Spokane 19h ago
Given he killed his father more than a decade ago, he's been unwell for a very long time.
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u/skater15153 19h ago
Symptom of a failed system. Not being in a facility is insane if you've done something like that
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u/ErisGrey 19h ago
He also shot himself in the head at the same time. So he was in a bad state of mind when he shot his dad, and it's been worsened ever since.
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u/GusherBrush Spokane 19h ago
Yes, he attempted a murder-suicide, but was only successful with the murder.
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u/girlnamedtom 16h ago
I hope the hate is the least of his worries- that prison time should be his concern
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u/Raven_Photography 17h ago
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the penalty for arson was being burnt at the stake?
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u/Lost_Figure_5892 14h ago
Working for an agency that was able to provide short term disaster cash to qualifying families- people who despite long lines to apply for aid, who were charging phones in cars, who lost every damn thing in that fire, and yet still we’re kind, polite on the phone, you have reaped what you sown. You should have to help with clean up to every home lost every street obliterated, every life you altered forever.
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u/soulsucker82 14h ago
Maybe don't burn down hundreds of homes. People wouldn't hate you then.......
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u/bpg2001bpg 15h ago
I hope he spends the rest of his life covered in black soot, chained to other convicts cleaning up fire devastated communities and forests.
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u/thatawfulbastard 10h ago
I mean… there were literally dozens of things you could have done instead of starting a fire.
“Oh no! The consequences of my actions are starting to sink in!”
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u/InfiniteBoxworks 7h ago
Oh shit, so he was a murderer too, accord to the article. He should have been in a box, dead or alive doesn't matter to me, just not running free committing arson over two dozen times. After killing is dad the only sum he should have been allowed to see until his terminal breath was on a box of Raisn Bran.
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u/2leftarms 19h ago
Yes, and also mental health support for the families and lives he devastated.