He said he didn’t know about a fire. Police say he set it while wife, kids were home

A man accused of setting his family’s Tacoma home ablaze with his wife and two children inside told investigators he didn’t know anything about a fire, according to court records.

Kenneth Lewis Massey, 47, pleaded not guilty Monday in Pierce County Superior Court to first-degree arson.

Judge Kitty-Ann van Doorninck set bail at $200,000 and signed orders prohibiting Massey from contacting his wife and daughters.

Court records did not list an attorney for him.

Charging papers give this account:

Police responded to the reported arson about 10 p.m. Saturday in the 4000 block of South Warner Street, where they found the house in flames.

Massey’s wife told police the two are separated and that her husband comes to the house to visit their children.

She said she was inside with two of her daughters, ages 13 and 16, when she heard a crash and then saw fire coming into the home through cracks at the front door.

She screamed for the girls to leave, and everyone got out “just barely” in time, the woman said.

Witnesses reported seeing Massey run away from the house, and officers found him nearby.

He smelled like flammable liquids and said he’d spilled gasoline on himself hours earlier at his landscaping job “though his clothing was still wet to the touch,” deputy prosecutor H. Eben Gorbaty wrote in a declaration for determination of probable cause.

Massey said he’d been to the house earlier Saturday, gotten into an argument with his wife and was on the way to visit a friend.

“The defendant said he didn't know anything about a fire, though there was a great billow of smoke, visible at a great distance,” the prosecutor wrote.

This story was originally published July 24, 2017 at 2:39 PM with the headline "He said he didn’t know about a fire. Police say he set it while wife, kids were home."