Hotel / Restaurant, Restaurant Pekin, IL – Sprinklers hold arson fire in check at popular restaurant and tavern June 8, 2016 viking210 An employee of a popular restaurant and tavern allegedly asked another for advice on how to set it on fire — now he is charged with arson. The combination of flaming stove burners and cooking oil, left atop the stove and spread on walls, caused minor damage to Goodfellas Pub & Pizza on Wednesday, though the business remained closed Monday. That obvious evidence of arson and his own statements led police on Friday to arrest Scott Sutherland, 34, of Pekin. He was charged in bonding court Sunday and remained in custody Monday on $10,000 bond. Sutherland’s alleged plan to destroy the business at 1414 N. Eighth St. “didn’t work out the way he thought it would,” Pekin Deputy Fire Chief Brian Cox said Monday. Cooking oil “is not very flammable.” Sutherland, a bartender and cook, told a fellow employee sometime before the fire “about moving to Texas and burning the business down,” and asked her if she knew how to set it on fire, according to a prosecutor’s court affidavit. Loud and electronic alarms set off by a sprinkler system alerted an officer in the area of the North Eighth Street Plaza, where Goodfellas is located, and firefighters to the smoldering flames in the business shortly before noon. While other businesses in the plaza were evacuated, the sprinklers kept the fire “in check until we got there,” Cox said. Firefighters discovered that all of the restaurant’s kitchen burners had been left on full blast, as well as its broiler and a fryer, the affidavit stated. A box of cooking oil sat on one of the burners, while more oil was smeared on walls where evidence of fire also was found. Sutherland allegedly prepared what he thought would turn into a huge blaze more than six hours earlier, after the business closed for the night. The restaurant’s security video equipment was missing, but video from another security system in the area recorded a man identified as Sutherland in the building between 4 and 5 a.m., “holding electronic equipment and pouring a substance on hallway walls,” the affidavit stated. Several employees said Sutherland was the last worker to leave Goodfellas the night before the fire and had keys to the business, the affidavit stated. Sutherland told police Friday that he didn’t remember setting the fire and didn’t do so on purpose, but thought it might have been “a drunken mistake,” the affidavit stated. He said he had returned to the business after closing to retrieve his apartment keys. He slipped on grease on the kitchen floor and bumped the stove, but didn’t think he turned it on.
