Police: Dover man set ex's car on fire in Hanover, asked if she "liked the camp fire"

A Dover man has been charged after allegedly attempting to set his ex-girlfriend's car on fire in Hanover last year, according to court records.

Hector Padilla, 23, of Dover, is charged with a felony count of reckless burning, along with misdemeanor counts of stalking, criminal mischief, harassment and prowling.

The charges stem from a Nov. 6, 2023 arson in Hanover Borough, where firefighters were called to the 600 block of Broadway around 10:28 p.m. for a report of a car fire.

According to an affidavit of probable cause filed by Hanover Borough Police Department, police were eventually able to tie Padilla to the crime through video footage and digital evidence obtained through court orders.

The affidavit states that police arrived on the scene to find that a Ford Escape had been set on fire to the rear of a residence. According to Hanover Area Fire & Rescue Chief Tony Clousher, firefighters arrived and found that the fire had been extinguished by the car's owner prior to the arrival of firefighters.

The rear wheel and tire of the car were burned, and soot stained the side of the car, Clousher said.

According to the affidavit, a firefighter informed police officers that he smelled an odor of volatile liquids around the ignition source of the fire, leading police to collect a soil sample as evidence to be tested.

Upon the return of lab tests, the soil sample was confirmed to contain gasoline, according to the affidavit.

Police were additionally able to obtain surveillance footage from a neighbor's house that showed the crime occur, the affidavit states.

In the footage, a subject, later identified by police as Padilla, appears and approaches the victim's vehicle with a liquid container in one hand and a cellphone in the other, records say.

The subject then walks away from the vehicle when another vehicle passes through the alley, but returns to it after the vehicle passes. Moments later, the footage lights up as if a fire had started, the affidavit states, and the subject then flees the scene.

When police spoke with the owner of the vehicle, a woman who told officers her vehicle caught fire while she was at her boyfriend's house, she informed officers that she received suspicious text messages shortly after the fire occurred.

The text messages, which claimed to be from "a Russian hacker," asked the victim if she "liked the camp fire."

Then, the messages claimed that another subject was researching a "hit man for hire" to target the victim's two children, the affidavit states.

When police looked into the phone number, they were able to determine it came from an application that advertises itself as giving users a "second phone number."

Through a court order, police were able to obtain the records for the account registered to that phone number, and found it was registered to an email address linked to Padilla.

Padilla is an ex-boyfriend of the victim, the affidavit states, and she was familiar with the email address he had used for the account.

An additional court order was obtained by Hanover police for the geolocation data of Padilla's phone from his service provider, which placed him in the area at the time the arson occurred, the affidavit states.

Padilla, who was initially arrested and confined at York County Prison, is out on $35,000 bail, court records show.

A preliminary hearing is set for Padilla on July 2, 2024.

Harrison Jones is the Hanover reporter for the Evening Sun. Reach him at hjones@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Hanover Evening Sun: Police: Dover man set ex's car on fire in Hanover PA