Hotel Fire Suspect Arraigned

A Tennessee man was'arraigne&Friday in Circuit Court on an arson charge stemming from the fire last month at the Ann Arbor Inn, 100 S. Fourth Ave. Robert Trotter, 38, of Parmyra, Tenn., I stood mute to the charge and a plea of I not gUilty was entered on his behalf by Judge Ross W. Campbell. A jury trial date will be set by the court. Trotter was remanded to jail under an unposted bond of $20,000. Trotter is accnsed of setting a fire in a room in which he was staying on the seventh floor of the downtown Ann Arbor hotel early on the morning of Feb. 13. The blaze was confined to the corner room where it began, but heat and heavy smoke throughout the seventh floor sent I guests scurrying down ladders and rushI ing down stairways to safety. An airplane pilot staying at the hotel escaped serious injury when the bed sheets he was using to lower himself out of a I dow broke and he feil to a roof. Damage to the hotel's seventh floor i was estimated at more than $300,000 by one local fire department official. Trotter was one of four persons taken to local hospitals for treatment of smoke j inhalation at the time of the fire. He was confined to the Intensive Care Unit at University Hospital, but recovered and j was discharged a few days after the blaze. Ann Arbor Pólice then picked him up and jailed him at the request of probaI tion authorities in Tennessee. Officers in I I that state said Trotter had served time I I in prison for arson and extortion and had I I violated the terms of his probation. Ann Arbor Deputy Fire Marshall I jamin Zahn said during Trotter's I H preliminary examination in 15th District I H Court last month that he had eliminated I R all accidental causes for the fire, which j B left only arson as a possible cause. H Zahn testified that in his opinión, the ■ hotel blaze had to have started from an B open fíame rather than from a smolderH ing type of fire. „nyiaH