Edmond Police Arrest Man Accused Of Starting House Fire With Molotov Cocktail

A man accused of terrorizing neighborhoods and businesses in Edmond was arrested earlier this week. 

Edmond Police Department officials said Brandon Gage, 36, was tied to a house fire from Tuesday and said he possibly used a Molotov cocktail.

Officers arrested Gage at his mother’s Edmond home. Gage was first booked into jail on a public intoxication charge until police started piecing the investigation together.

Flames shot from a fully engulfed home near downtown Edmond early Tuesday morning. 

The officer at the scene was told by fire investigators that the blaze appeared suspicious.

“They said it was set by something that looked like a Molotov cocktail,” Emily Ward, the public information officer for the Edmond Police Department, said. “Like something had been thrown through the window.”

The same officer was called to a disturbance at a 7-Eleven store about a mile from the house fire. The clerk told the officer a man came in yelling and screaming racial slurs at him.

“The clerk also mentioned he was bragging about setting a fire,” Ward said.

The man allegedly told the clerk he doused a home with gasoline and left it burning. An hour later, a woman called for police reporting her adult son was in her garage screaming and ranting.

“He was now making a disturbance in his own neighborhood,” Ward said.  

Police identified the man as Gage and said he matched the description the 7-Eleven employee gave the officer. The department released the officer’s body camera video of his interaction with Gage.

“There’s some other stuff that gone on tonight and I think you know what I’m talking about,” the officer said. Gage responded he did not know what the officer was talking about.  

Gage's mother told police her son spoke about having everything to make a Molotov cocktail and threatened to burn her house down.

“So, all of this information being put together is really pointing at him as the one that set this fire,” Ward said.

Gage now faces one complaint of first-degree arson. He has not been formally charged by the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office.