View pictures from the fire at Photo Showcase: Lincoln Public Schools district building fire.
LINCOLN — Fire inspectors suspect a former Lincoln teacher used a cigarette lighter to set fire to a pile of papers on her supervisor’s desk.
The May 30 fire grew quickly out of control and destroyed the Lincoln Public Schools district headquarters before it could be extinguished. School officials have estimated the loss at $20 million.
Sharon E. Brewster, 44, a gifted-education coordinator and reading recovery teacher, was arrested Monday on suspicion of first-degree arson. She remains in jail awaiting the filing of formal charges.
Although LPS officials on Monday pointed to Brewster’s employee badge and electronic key-card as evidence that she had been in the building that day, Lincoln Chief Fire Inspector Bill Moody said it was old-fashioned shoe leather that identified Brewster as a suspect.
A witness had reported seeing someone matching Brewster’s description on the scene, he said. Investigator Ken Hilger’s detective work and interviews of school employees helped him develop a hypothesis that pointed to Brewster.
“We worked 2 1/2 weeks at the fire scene, and we couldn’t come up with anything remotely accidental for a cause,” Moody said. “Then we started looking at the people who had come and gone, and Ken developed her as a person of interest. . . . He did an outstanding job.”
Moody declined to offer possible motives for setting the fire, saying more information would be available later in court documents.
Moody said Kirk Langer, the school district’s chief information officer, probably came upon the fire within minutes of it being set. Langer reported the fire shortly after 11 p.m., after he’d finished work on a project in his office and started for home. Langer, however, did not see Brewster.
“It wasn’t a huge fire when he first saw it ,” Moody said. “But it was the end of the school year and there was a huge pile of papers on the desk. There was a huge fuel load in the building.”
Lincoln Police spokeswoman Katie Flood said Brewster came into the police station voluntarily Monday morning and was arrested on suspicion of first-degree arson, a Class I felony that carries a penalty of up to 50 years in prison.
Lancaster County Attorney Joe Kelly said Brewster probably would be formally charged Wednesday.
Brewster’s arrest came just one day before Tuesday’s start of the new school year for the Lincoln Public Schools.
During Monday’s press conference announcing the arrest, Superintendent Steve Joel repeatedly said how shocked and dismayed he was to learn that a school employee has been accused of starting the fire.
“I don’t understand why somebody would deliberately set fire to a cubicle or a hallway or any place,” he said. “People could have been hurt. We had people working in that building.”
Citing the ongoing investigation, Joel declined to say exactly when the fire was alleged to have been set, only that it appeared not to have been long before the fire was discovered.
He also declined to speculate about what may have motivated the person who did it, although he acknowledged that “employees do get disgruntled.”
Brewster, who submitted her resignation Monday, had worked for the school district about five years, Joel said.
She was assigned to work at Saratoga Elementary School, but her status as an itinerant teacher also meant she had a desk in the headquarters building.
Nancy Biggs, associate director of human resources, said “health problems” prevented Brewster from reporting for work when other teachers returned to school last week. She declined to provide specifics.
Even though the fire now appears to be the result of arson, Joel stressed that the district is “fully insured.”
He said district administrators continue to be housed in two privately owned office buildings. The district is six to eight weeks away from a decision on how to replace the headquarters building.
A smaller building — 75,000 square feet, compared with the old building’s 100,000 square feet — is under discussion.
School board President Kathy Danek and Joel also said the district is reviewing its security procedures to ensure that students and staff are as safe as possible, considering that employees often need to come into the office after hours to complete their work.
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