COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — A Foreman High School senior has been charged with lighting the fire that forced officials to cancel classes earlier this week.
Darian Davis, 18, was caught on camera near a restricted area where the fire broke out about 11:45 a.m. Monday, Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto said during a bond hearing Wednesday.
Roughly 900 students and 125 faculty and staff members were inside the building at 3235 N. Leclaire Ave. at the time, Scaduto said. Officials estimate $60,000 in damages.
"You are lucky that nobody was hurt. ... This isn't a joke," Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil told Davis on Wednesday before setting bail at $250,000.
Should Davis post bond, he cannot return to Foreman and will be under a strict 24/7 curfew, court records show. The teen would need $25,000, or 10 percent of the total bail amount.
According to his public defender, Davis is a high school senior who was set to graduate in June. Scaduto said CPS has agreed to find Davis alternative schooling if he posts bond.
No one was injured in the fire, which began around 11:45 a.m. Monday and was put out "immediately," Foreman officials said via Twitter.
According to Scaduto, Davis lit the blaze inside a blue recycling bin on the school's second floor. Papers caught fire and burned a nearby wall, she said, and smoke and chemical-extinguisher damage could total $60,000.
The fire forced afternoon classes, after-school activities and night school to be canceled Monday, Foreman officials said. School did not resume in Foreman's main building until Wednesday, although students attended classes in the modular buildings on Foreman's campus and at Steinmetz High School in Belmont Cragin on Tuesday, a spokesman for the school district said.
Davis, of the 5300 block of West Crystal Street, was arrested near the school about 7:50 a.m. Tuesday, court records show. He is charged with aggravated arson.
Scaduto said Davis was seen on camera Monday morning leaving a third-floor cafeteria and walking down a stairwell toward a second-floor hallway. There, Davis disappears from view for 40 seconds when he ducks into the restricted hallway where the fire was lit.
When Davis reappears on camera, he can been seen looking around the hallway, Scaduto said. The school's fire alarm went off around the same time, she added.
Davis has no prior convictions, but was arrested at school for pulling a fire alarm in November 2014, prosecutors said. Davis was released to his parents, and the case never went to court.
According to his public defender, Davis works as a stock person at Home Goods and facilitates YMCA youth programming through After School Matters.
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