It was a single act that destroyed a block of businesses. It was
a single act that caused an estimated $3 million in damage to
downtown Hollister. And it was a single act
– the court of this county ultimately decided – that gave
Anthony Robert Mizner one strike instead of the six that would have
kept him in prison for life.
It was a single act that destroyed a block of businesses. It was a single act that caused an estimated $3 million in damage to downtown Hollister. And it was a single act – the court of this county ultimately decided – that gave Anthony Robert Mizner one strike instead of the six that would have kept him in prison for life.
Mizner, the 49-year-old Hollister resident responsible for burning down an entire block of downtown Hollister businesses on the east side of San Benito Street between Sixth and Seventh streets in 1991, has been a free man for two months, the district attorney’s office confirmed Tuesday.
It wasn’t the arson conviction that sent him to prison for life, as he was sentenced to six years in prison for the downtown fire.
In 1999, Mizner was sentenced to life in prison – on what then-Deputy District Attorney Greg LaForge argued was a third strike – for kicking a woman in the head while she drove him to jail, according to court documents.
*In 2003, Judge Alan Hedegard ruled five of Mizner’s six strikes did not count, according to court documents. Thus, Mizner had two strikes, and his sentence was reduced to 10 years for assault with a deadly weapon and dissuading a witness by force or threat.
At his sentence hearing for the arson charges in 1992, Judge Thomas Breen said he could be penalized only for one of the counts since it resulted from a single act.
“The court thinks that a term of more than six years is appropriate, but not possible under the law,” Breen told the court before he sentenced Mizner at that hearing.
Gilbert Perez, who lost his Radio Shack business in the 1991 blaze, believed Mizner deserved more.
“It’s a travesty of justice,” Perez told a Free Lance reporter at the time. “He’s destroyed our dreams.”
Supervisor Anthony Botelho was on duty as a captain with the Hollister Fire Department on Mar. 26, 1991 when Mizner set the blaze. Botelho and other firefighters battled the early morning fire, which had fully engulfed the building by the time they arrived.
“Mr. Mizner was in the crowd,” Botelho recalled Thursday, “The handful of people out at 2:30 in the morning watching six businesses burn to the ground.”
Botelho recognized Mizner from a previous fire – when Dick Bruhn’s burned in the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
“He actually helped me pull hose,” Botelho said.
Police connected Mizner to the 1991 blaze because of a stuffed rabbit found at Mizner’s home that was taken from Goularte Floral the morning of the fire. Firefighters arriving to the blaze noticed a hole in the window of the floral shop.
Botelho was called to the police station to identify Mizner. He walked into an interrogation room before he saw the man but knew Mizner had been caught.
“There was a 4-foot-tall rabbit sitting on a chair,” Botelho said. “Just me and the rabbit in the room.”
