GLENDALE : Transient Gets 1 Year in Jail for Bank Arson

A transient was sentenced to one year in jail Wednesday for setting a fire that caused heavy damage in a California Federal Bank building in Glendale, officials said.

Tobian Layne Wilson, 35, was sentenced after entering a no-contest plea during a pretrial conference before Pasadena Superior Court Judge Janice Croft, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Tamia Hope. Croft then sentenced Wilson to a year in county jail and five years’ probation, the prosecutor said, adding that after the jail term, the defendant will have to enroll in a 180-day alcohol rehabilitation program.

Wilson, who had been convicted in 1979 of grand theft, could have been sentenced up to eight years in state prison.

The Dec. 18 blaze damaged an abandoned office on the second floor of the three-story California Federal Bank building, at 158 S. Brand Blvd. Damage was placed at $240,000.

Investigators learned from an eyewitness that Wilson threw a match on some papers on that were lying on a mattress on the abandoned office floor, where Wilson and nearly 20 other transients had lived. He was arrested April 27.