IRONTON, Ohio (AP) – A man accused of starting a 1996 fire at an Ohio fireworks store that killed nine people has died in a mental health facility.
The Lawrence County Prosecutor’s office says Todd Hall died March 8 at an Athens facility where he’d been treated for several years. He was 43.
His cause of death wasn’t immediately available Monday.
Hall was 24 when prosecutors say that, as a prank, he threw a lighted cigarette on a shelf crammed with fireworks at the Ohio River Fireworks store in Scottown, about 100 miles southeast of Cincinnati. The blaze July 3, 1996, killed eight people. A ninth died later.
Hall repeatedly was found incompetent to stand trial for aggravated arson and involuntary manslaughter. He had suffered a traumatic brain injury years before the fire.