Last Monday, a man was arrested near the Walmart on Garners Ferry Road after police say he intentionally set a fire inside the store, causing approximately $30,000 in damages but no injuries.
The same suspect was identified in video surveillance at another Walmart on Two Notch Road, where he allegedly set another fire on Sunday.
Columbia police identified the man in a news release on Tuesday, complete with the man’s mugshot. But by Wednesday, police confirmed the man now being held in the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center was not the person they originally identified.
Instead, by Thursday investigators had identified the suspect as Jarod Daniel Stacy through fingerprint and facial recognition, Columbia police announced on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. Stacy, 27, also admitted his identity to police, the department said. He now faces a charge of identity fraud as well as second-degree arson.
WIS TV spoke to the man who was originally identified as the suspect, a Mount Pleasant resident who told the TV station he lost his ID at a Greenville Walmart in January. He provided the TV station with a photo ID that matched the name of the arson suspect, but not the booking photo released by police.
The State has reached out to the man who was mistakenly identified as the suspect but has not heard back before publication.
Deputy Police Chief Melron Kelly told The State that Stacy gave officers a false name at the time of his arrest but was not carrying an ID at the time. He was booked under that name and identified publicly before his identity could be confirmed.
“Typically when we make an arrest, we will compare the ID against known fingerprints, but that hadn’t been done before the information on the arrest was released,” Kelly said.
The wrongly identified man’s father contacted the police department after his son was named in the media as a suspected arsonist. Police spoke to the man, who does not live in Columbia, and determined he had nothing to do with the fires in two area Walmarts, Kelly said.
“We compared the two, and they looked similar but not alike in terms of hair color and weight,” Kelly said.
Stacy was ultimately identified from prior arrest records, Kelly said. He remained in the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center as of Monday morning. Kelly said the police department remain in touch with the identity theft victim and his family, “and anything else we can do with them, we will do that.”