Bangor man gets 2 years in arson case

BANGOR – A man was sentenced Wednesday in Penobscot County Superior Court to 13 years in prison with all but two years suspended for setting fire to a mattress in an apartment on First Street in Bangor.

Lloyd Trask, 49, of Bangor also was sentenced to four years of probation and ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution to the victim after pleading guilty to arson.

“We had argued for three years in prison because of the very serious nature of the crime,” Greg Campbell, assistant district attorney for Penobscot County, said Wednesday. “We’re satisfied this is a fair sentence given the defendant’s fairly minimal criminal history and his acceptance of responsibility.”

Trask’s codefendant, Thomas Rafferty, 53, of Bangor was found not guilty in October by a jury following a two-day trial.

Campbell said in October that the two men gave conflicting stories about the June 6 fire.

Both men were at Trask’s apartment on First Street in June, Campbell said. Both had been drinking heavily, according to police reports.

A woman who lived in the building testified in October that she went to Trask’s apartment to investigate “a ruckus” and saw that Trask’s mattress was on fire.

The woman also said she saw burned paper towels along the hallway toward the apartment of another tenant with whom Trask allegedly had a dispute.

Campbell said damage to the apartment building was minimal because the owner recently had installed interconnected smoke detectors, and the Bangor Fire Department arrived within minutes of the fire being reported.