Investigators: Ashley Furniture fire was arson

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Fire investigators say they believe the fire that destroyed the Ashley Furniture store on Patton Avenue this week was arson. Witnesses reported seeing somebody fleeing the scene, and dogs trained to sniff out accelerants detected something.

The arson investigators want anyone who has video from that night to call them.

We shot this photo of Edie the SBI dog sniffing the debris. We couldn’t tell if she “alerted” on anything or not, but it was the second or third time investigators had brought dogs to the scene to see what they could find.