LASSEN COUNTY, Calif. — A Criminal Justice lecturer was accused of setting a series of fires in the Lassen National Forest near the Dixie Fire.
A court-filed complaint identified the man as Gary Stephen Maynard, 47, and accused him of committing several arsons in the past month near the Lassen National Forest and Shasta Trinity National Forest.
According to the complaint, officials believe Maynard went into evacuation zones and set fires behind first responders as they fought the second largest wildfire in state history. The complaint said his actions posed a danger of enlarging the Dixie Fire, threatening lives and property, and increasing danger to firefighters.
"Maynard’s fires were placed in the perfect position to increase the risk of firefighters being trapped between fires. But for the dedication and efforts of U.S. Forest Service investigators working around the clock to track Maynard, those fires would not have been discovered in their infancy," the complaint said.
According to the complaint, Maynard was living out of his car, traveling across Northern California, and seemed to have trouble holding a teaching job at various universities.
One of those universities was Sonoma State University, where he specialized in criminal justice, social science research methods and cults and deviant behavior, according to the university website's description.
A spokesperson for the university said Maynard was contracted to to temporarily fill in for a faculty member who was on leave and taught two seminars in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies in Fall 2020.
"Gary Maynard does not currently have an appointment with Sonoma State University. He was a part-time lecturer in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He was employed with Sonoma State University in Fall 2020, but did not have an appointment for Spring 2021," the university said in a statement to ABC10.
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