By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, The Oregonian/OregonLive
An Oregon man faces criminal charges after police say he ignited and tossed a large firework during a parking lot spat and accidentally set four moving trucks on fire — as well as someone secretly siphoning gas from one of them.
The wild blaze erupted early Sunday morning in Eugene when Dylan Thomas Hannah, 28, got into a verbal altercation with a woman in her 30s outside a U-Haul storage center on Oroyan Avenue about 5:45 a.m., police said.
During the exchange of words, Hannah lit a mortar-style firework from inside his car and threw it at the woman, who ran for cover, said Melinda McLaughin, a Eugene Police Department spokeswoman.
The subsequent blast sent sparks flying through the U-Haul parking lot, police said. Some of the burning embers landed near a bank of moving trucks where, unbeknownst to the quarrelers, a man had been siphoning gas.
Four moving trucks burst into flames, McLaughlin said. So did the unsuspecting gas thief, who was spotted fleeing the scene with his pants and sleeves on fire.
Police later tracked down Hannah and booked him into the Lane County Jail on suspicion of second-degree criminal mischief, reckless burning and reckless endangerment, records show.
The suspected gas siphoner remains at large, McLaughlin said.
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