Couple sues Palmetto Bluff security firm for hiring suspected arsonist

A Palmetto Bluff couple whose partially built house was allegedly burned by a security guard who also worked as a Lady's Island firefighter still awaits the outcome of a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages from the security company that hired him.

The suit, filed by Norman and Marjorie Agin, names Norred & Associates, the Atlanta security company used by Palmetto Bluff, and two local security directors as defendants.

Norred president Jeff Bohling declined comment Wednesday. Attorneys for Norred and the security directors couldn't be reached for comment.

Among other things, the suit alleges Norred and the Palmetto Bluff supervisors were negligent when they:

• Failed to investigate four suspicious fires -- later determined to have been set by Lady's Island firefighter Bryan Yeager-- that occurred before the one that destroyed the Agins' house.

• Failed to investigate Yeager before hiring him as a security guard. Yeager was fired by the Fire Department after the blazes.

• Failed to investigate Yeager after the fires.

• Failed to report three of those four fires to the Bluffton Police Department.

Attorneys for the security company deny those allegations and ask the court to dismiss the suit.

The Agins seek $1 million in damages with interest and attorney fees. Neither they nor their attorney could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Their Headwaters Road house was about 80 percent completed when it was burned Jan. 12, 2008. The fire caused significant damage that prevented it from being finished on schedule, according to the suit.

Yeager was the first person to report the fire, the suit says.

The four earlier fires occurred on Jan. 20, 2007; Nov. 25 and 26, 2007; Dec. 16, 2007; and Jan. 10, 2008, two days before the blaze at the Agin house.

Yeager, hired as a part-time security officer in October 2006, was on patrol when each fire broke out and was the first to report two of them, according to the suit.

Records from the GPS in Yeager's patrol car showed that he was in the vicinity of each of the four fires just before they were reported, according to the suit.

Norred's directors did not report three of the four fires to the Bluffton Police Department -- a violation of its license to operate issued by the S.C. Law Enforcement Division, the suit alleges.

SLED and the Bluffton Police Department investigated all the fires after the blaze at the Agin house. They suspected Yeager, a full-time Lady's Island firefighter, was responsible for all five, according to the suit. Yeager confessed to setting all the blazes soon after, it says.

According to the suit, the defendants "should have suspected that Mr. Yeager was setting these fires before he set the fire at the Agins' home" and failed to take "any steps to conduct an investigation into the cause of the four previous fires and specifically they took no steps to investigate Mr. Yeager."

Had they investigated the previous fires or reported them to police, "the authorities could have stopped Mr. Yeager before he set the fire at the Agins' home," the suit alleges.

Norred still provides security at Palmetto Bluff, spokeswoman Courtney Naughton said Wednesday.

The Agins filed their suit Feb. 23. They are seeking a jury trial.

Yeager was charged Jan. 16, 2008, with three counts of setting a brush fire, one count of setting a structure fire and one count of arson, according to the Beaufort County Detention Center log. He was released on his own recognizance eight days later.

Yeager's trial is tentatively slated for December, though the schedule hasn't been finalized, a spokesman with the 14th Circuit Solicitor's Office said.