Deputy Prosecutor Gary Marek alleged Tuesday that Joseph Desi torched Dirk Tanses’ Merrillville detached garage in a “fit of rage” because he just started to date his ex-girlfriend.
Desi, 39, of Buchanan, Michigan, is on trial in Lake Superior Court in Crown Point this week.
He is charged with two counts of Level 4 felony arson.
The fire destroyed Tanses’ home on the 3300 block of W. 79th Place and spread to a second house.
Defense lawyer Russell Brown argued the evidence, including fuzzy video surveillance couldn’t pin down that Desi did it.
“This case is about assumptions,” he said.
His client sold a truck seen that night on video about two months before the fire. It was broken down for parts and scrapped in Michigan. Although cell records showed Desi in the area, Brown said he was meeting a friend at a nearby McDonald’s to loan her $1,000.
In testimony, Tanses said Tuesday the woman left his house around 10 p.m. that night after their second date. He was in bed asleep when he heard “this very loud boom.” The vibrations from the blast “shook me.”
He didn’t realize what happened. After hearing “crackling noises” and “electricity buzzing,” he noticed the neighbor’s house across the street was on fire.
Another neighbor told him to get out, saying his garage was on fire. After he got out, he went back and managed to rescue one of the three cats in his house.
Tanses said he didn’t know who Desi was and couldn’t identify him in the courtroom.
Police were called just after midnight on May 21, 2022. By then, Tanses’ home was “fully engulfed.”
A nearby security camera captured a man going into the first house’s open garage, then running down the street. A witness said he saw a dark-colored “suspicious truck” 10 minutes before an “explosion.”
The woman told police Tanses took her on a date on May 13, 2022 on his motorcycle. Desi, her ex-boyfriend, “confronted” her after she got home.
A Merrillville fire inspector concluded the fire spread from a “flammable liquid.”