Arson Investigators Impound Gas Cans Martin Pang, Sought For Questioning, Remains At Large

Police searching a burned-out frozen food warehouse for evidence in a fatal arson investigation seized four five-gallon gasoline cans, court papers released Thursday show.

Three of those cans were marked “for prints” in search warrant inventory lists.

Four Seattle firefighters died in the Jan. 5 blaze that gutted the Mary Pang Food Products warehouse.

In seeking a search warrant for the warehouse, police said Deputy Fire Chief Stuart Rose had witnessed the fire in its early stages and “observed four different unconnected and uncommunicated fires.”

Rose told police “it is virtually impossible for a fire to start in multiple locations … unless that fire is deliberately and purposely set,” says the affidavit.

King County Superior Court Judge William Downing ordered the release of the search warrants and supporting documents at the request of KING-TV. Names of possible witnesses and informants were blacked out.

The documents, which had been sealed at investigators’ request, concern searches at the warehouse immediately after the blaze and at the home of business owners Harry and Mary Pang, whose 39-year-old son, Martin, is sought for questioning. A car and storage lockers used by Martin Pang also were searched.

Martin Pang, named in a federal fugitive warrant, remained at large Thursday. A resident of Los Angeles since 1993, he was questioned shortly after the fire and denied any involvement, suggesting a transient might have set the fire.

His attorney, Allen Ressler, has said Pang will surrender this week. Ressler’s office declined comment Thursday.

In a Jan. 21 affidavit, Detectives Steve O’Leary and Dave Tallman said investigators had determined the arsonist entered the warehouse basement “by entering the code into the alarm keypad. Firefighters who were first on the scene found that all doors not secured by a keypad were locked.”

An alarm control panel, transformer and phone panel also were among the items seized.

The detectives also said a padlock on one interior door had been pried off, but from the inside. Whoever pried open the door tried to make it appear the door had been forced from outside “as perhaps a transient would,” they wrote.