Eugene Police arrested Charles Lee Porter, 50, Friday on charges of reckless burning and reckless endangering in connection with a small brush fire near Riverfront Parkway and Millrace Drive, just blocks from the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials.
Porter also was cited for trespassing.
Eugene Police Department spokeswoman Melinda Kletzok said Porter has a history of similar incidents.
“Basically he was lighting the grass and weeds on fire,” Kletzok said.
Laura Carter, 32, was on her way to the Trials when she said she heard the crackling of the fire. Carter estimated the fire was about 50 feet wide when she called police.
The University’s Department of Public Safety was the first on the scene, spokesman Phil Weiler said. The Eugene Fire Department soon followed and extinguished the blaze between railroad tracks and a parking lot.
Carter was in the parking lot with another woman when a man passed whom Carter said she felt she should watch.
She told police she saw a man with scraggly hair emerge from the bushes. “It was a little close in time, so I was like ‘Oh, that’s a little odd,’” she said.
Porter was detained before firefighters left the scene.
“It didn’t look like much damage was done,” Weiler said.
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