Judge Cuts Arsonist’s Sentence by 1 Year

LOS ANGELES —  A judge has sliced one year off the three-year prison sentence of Robert Edward Lowenberg, the 20-year-old Cypress man who set two fires that destroyed 7,100 acres of the Cleveland National Forest last summer and caused $2.7 million in damage.

The sentence was reduced in a terse, two-sentence order signed by U.S. District Judge James M. Ideman.

“I’m flabbergasted,” said Ronald Lowenberg, the young man’s father, when he learned of the decision. The elder Lowenberg, police chief of Cypress, has visited his son four times this summer at a medium-security federal prison near El Paso, Tex.

“That pleases me greatly. Rob has really made a turnaround. He’s healthy, he’s doing volunteer work with the prison chaplain, and he’s involved in voluntary drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Hopefully, it will turn his life around,” the father said Friday.

Lowenberg’s father said he was unaware of the judge’s order, which was signed Wednesday and made public Friday. He added that he did not know the reason for the action.

At his first parole hearing Aug. 23, Lowenberg learned that under parole commission guidelines, he could expect to serve the entire 36-month sentence, in part because of the extensive damage caused by the fire.

Lowenberg had written Ideman in July, stating he believed that he should be allowed to be eligible for parole before 36 months had passed. According to the court file, Ideman did not rule on that request.

Ideman’s decision means that, at most, Lowenberg will be required to serve 24 months. He began serving the term May 16.

Lowenberg, 19 at the time he set the fires last Sept. 9, went to the forest with a friend, “got drunk and high” and “didn’t care what happened,” according to the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Atty. Ronni B. MacLaren.

A court-appointed psychiatrist who questioned Lowenberg found him to be suffering from “no mental disorder and with absolutely no justification or excuse for his conduct.”

Lowenberg set two small fires a short time apart, and they combined to form a brush fire that took two weeks to extinguish. Asked why he set the first fire, Lowenberg told the psychiatrist “because things looked so much better on drugs.” Asked about the second fire, Lowenberg said he was “so drunk, I don’t know why,” according to MacLaren.

Lowenberg was arrested a week after the fire when a friend, Anthony Tafoya, told Forest Service investigators that he watched Lowenberg set the fire. Tafoya said the two friends had gone to the forest to get high and shoot a BB gun. When questioned, Lowenberg admitted setting the blaze.

The fire cost $2.7 million to fight and at least six firefighters were injured.

Lowenberg is imprisoned at the La Tuna federal correctional facility. He has asked to be transferred from the medium-security prison to a work camp nearby.