Trial Ordered In Hotel Fire

A Tennessee mánüas been bound over to Washtenaw Circuit Court to stand trial i on an arson charge in connection with the fire earlier this month at the Ann Arborlnn, 100 S. FourthAve. Ann Arbor District Judge Pieter G. V. Thomassen ruled this moming, following , a court hearing in the .case Wednesday, that there was probable cause presented by the prosecutión that Robert Trotter, 38, was responsibje fpr setting the fire. Assistant Public Defender John Thompson, representing Trotter, objected to the bindover, and. claimed that while it was clear that there ha.d been a fire at the hotel, there was insufficient evidence showing that Trotter had started it. Thomassen took the case under advisement overnight and announced his decisión this morning. Trotter was remanded to the County Jail under an unposted boni of $K,0Ö0 ahd Is séiled'Wipear for arraignment in Circuit Court on March 14. Trotter is accused. of setting, a fire in a room in which he was s.taying on the seventh floor of the downtown Anñ Arbor hotel early on the morning of ,Feb. 13. The blaze was confiried' to the corner, room where it began, but heat and heavy smoke throughout the seventh floor sent guests scurrying down ladders and rushing down stairways to safety. An airplane pilot staying at the hotel escaped serious injury when the bed sheets he was using for a rope to lower himself out of a window broke and he feil to a roof. Damage to the hotel's seventh floor was estinïated at more than $300,000 by one fire department official. Trotter was one óf four persons taken to local hospitals for treatment of smoke - - - t-m - - ■ i inhalation at the time of the fire. He had v been in the Intensive Care Unit of University Hospital, but recovered and I was discharged a few days after the I blaze. Ann Arbor Pólice then picked him up I and jailed him at the request of tion authorities in Tennessee. Officers in I that state said Trotter had served time I in prison for arson and extortion and had I violated the terms of his probation. Deputy Fire Marshall Benjamin Zahn I Jr., who investigated the cause of the fire, was one of five witnesses to testify I Wednesday during Trotter's preliminary examination in 15th District Court. Zahn said he eliminated all accidental I causes for the fire, which left only arson I as a possible cause. He said it was his I opinión that the hotel blaze had to have I started from an open flame rather than from a smoldering type of fire. - ■