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HIGHLAND, Calif. -- A police officer scaled a hill and ran back down again Thursday before capturing an arson suspect after five small-but-suspicious fires broke out in the San Bernardino National Forest.
The afternoon fires were close together, totaled about one acre, and were quickly doused by firefighters from several agencies, Forest Service spokesman John Miller said.
A person was seen in the area around the time the blazes began on Old Waterman Canyon Road north of state Route 18. He's was spotted by a sheriff's helicopter, and a deputy and two Forest Service employees began chasing him as he ran up a large hill.
San Bernardino police officer Brett Murphy, an experienced hiker and mountain climber, found a quicker path up the 800-to-900-foot hill and was waiting for the suspect, who turned around when he saw the officer then started tumbling down the hill.
"He was rolling for at least a couple of hundred feet down this grassy hill," Murphy told the Riverside Press-Enterprise (http://bit.ly/13ha8bW). "But there were bushes and stuff that were slowing him down. I was trying to catch up to him. A couple of times, he tried to hide under all the grass."
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