Arrest made in deadly 2018 Iconic Village fire in San Marcos

SAN MARCOS, Texas - Officials say an arrest has been made almost five years after an apartment fire in San Marcos killed five people.

Officials with city, county, state and federal agencies held a news conference to announce the arrest of Jacobe Ferguson.

He has been charged with arson causing serious bodily injury or death, a first degree felony.

Ferguson was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Lone Star Fugitive Task Force on July 5 around 6:45 a.m. in the 700 block of Slaughter Lane in Austin and booked into the Hays County Jail.

At the time of the fire, he was a resident of the complex who had been interviewed by law enforcement in the past, and a Texas State student.

The San Marcos Fire Department, the San Marcos Police Department, the Houston Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Hays County District Attorney’s Office, Hays County Justice of the Peace, and the Texas DPS Texas Ranger Division say it was a collaborative effort that led to Ferguson's arrest.

For each new tip or piece of information, a report of investigation (ROI) was generated.

San Marcos Fire Marshal Jonathan Henderson said there are at least 265 ROIs related to this case.

"I've had numerous extremely difficult conversations with these families over the past five years. For five years. I've had to tell them we still don't have the answers," said Les Stephens, San Marcos Fire Department chief.

Some of the families were there on Thursday.

"We're eternally grateful for all of those that kept looking and kept relooking when everybody else said, we can't find anything, we can't find an answer," said Brian Frizzell, Haley Frizzell's father.

The breakthrough came when a task force was created in 2022 that met almost weekly, and witnesses were reinterviewed, ultimately leading to Ferguson's arrest.

"It was really predominately based on the witness interviews that we had at the time. There was no tip that came forward that provided new information," said Jonathan Henderson, San Marcos Fire Department Fire Marshal. "I think that we had the right people on scene in the beginning and continuing throughout the past five years. We just needed a new fresh set of eyes."

What happened on July 20, 2018?

The fire started just before 4:30 a.m. at Iconic Village Apartments in the 200 block of Ramsay Street, engulfing building 500 and moving to building 300. A resident told the AP he woke up around 4:25 a.m. to the smell of smoke.

The fire also damaged a building at the nearby Vintage Pads Apartments, located in the 1000 block of North LBJ Drive. 

Both buildings were owned and operated by the same company, San Marcos Green Investors LLC, based in Chicago, according to the Hays County Appraisal District’s website, which the AP confirmed with the company's manager.

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Officials at the time told the AP that the building where the bodies were recovered wasn't equipped with a sprinkler system as the buildings were constructed in the 1970s and local authorities could not require the buildings to be retrofitted.

The city fire marshal also confirmed to the AP the complex did not have a fire suppression system, but did not comment on whether there were working smoke or fire alarms.

In November 2018, the San Marcos Fire Department and the ATF announced the fire was intentionally set and the deaths had been ruled homicides.

In October 2022, an investigative team was formed that was dedicated to solving the open investigation.

The victims

Five people died in the fire: 

• 21-year-old Belinda Moats of Big Wells
• 19-year-old Haley Michele Frizzell of San Angelo
• 21-year-old David Ortiz of Pasadena
• 20-year-old Dru Estes of San Antonio
• 23-year-old James Miranda of Mount Pleasant

Moats, Frizzell, Ortiz and Estes were all students at Texas State University. All five were found in the same building.

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At least seven others were also injured in the fire, including Zachary Sutterfield, who sustained third-degree burns to nearly 70 percent of his body and a brain injury.

Officials stated at the time that around 200 residents were impacted by the fire.

James Miranda's father filed a $1 million lawsuit in July 2018 alleging the apartments did not have properly functioning sprinklers, and fire alarms failed to alert residents of the blaze.

The apartment building was torn down six months later.