Roger Trujillo

ELYRIA — A Columbia Station couple has been indicted on charges accusing them of torching their home for insurance money in 2007.

Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Dave Muhek said Roger and Susan Trujillo, both 41, were facing foreclosure on their Sprague Road home when the blaze began on March 23, 2007.

Roger Trujillo is charged with insurance fraud, arson and complicity to arson, while his wife is charged with aggravated arson, arson and insurance fraud.

No one was home at the time of the fire, which the state fire marshal ruled an arson caused by an ignitable liquid poured in the hallway of the home, Muhek said.

Muhek said investigators began looking at the fire more closely after the couple’s insurance company raised suspicions about the fire.

Carl Rose, the couple’s attorney, said his clients had nothing to do with the fire. Roger Trujillo was at work at the time, and Susan Trujillo and the couple’s four children were at her mother’s house, he said.

Susan Trujillo

Rose said the couple had already had lost the house to foreclosure and knew they were going to be forced to leave soon.
“Why would they burn their house down? They had nothing to gain,” he said.

Rose said he believes that Nationwide Insurance pushed the case of arson because it didn’t want to pay an insurance claim on the family’s belongings.

The insurance company reached a settlement with the Trujillos earlier this year to cover about half of what was lost in the fire, Rose said.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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