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A Bristol County grand jury has charged a man with setting fire to the Hawthorne Country Club in Dartmouth.
Shawn Lee Medeiros, 31, was arrested by state police on Thursday and arraigned in Bristol County Superior Court. He was charged with one count of burning a building in connection with a fire that destroyed the long-vacant country club on May 7 last year.
Investigators determined less than two weeks after the blaze that the fire was intentionally set.
The clubhouse building at 970 Tucker Road in Dartmouth had been vacant since 2016. The family of fishing mogul Carlos Rafael bought the property in 2021 and planned to sell it to Toll Brothers, a luxury home builder, for $3 million. The real estate deal hasn’t closed yet.
The fire was reported around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 7, 2023, and it was extinguished in about two hours, after crews from all three of Dartmouth’s fire districts responded, District 2 Chief Erick Turcotte said at the time. The building was a “total loss” he added.
The fire was immediately suspicious, prosecutors said. In a press release, a spokesman for the Bristol County District Attorney said the clubhouse had no running water, electricity, or other utilities that could have started a fire. A state police K-9 indicated the presence of fire accelerants on scene and lab results later confirmed that accelerants were used to start the fire. An independent insurance investigation also determined that the fire was set deliberately, the press release said.
Medeiros was one of the witnesses that investigators interviewed at the scene of the fire. Prosecutors say he told investigators he was working at the clubhouse moving furniture that day. Investigators questioned him several more times and obtained surveillance footage from the area, though the prosecutors’ press release did not explain what the footage showed.
Medeiros was released after his arraignment on Thursday on the conditions that he stay away from the country club and report to the probation department at least once a week.
A spokesman for the district attorney did not immediately respond to questions on Friday about whether Medeiros has any connection to the building’s owners.
A realtor for the country club property did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Medeiros could not be reached for comment.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
Editor’s note: This story was updated on Friday, March 29, 2024, with more details.
One less thing for the buyers to get rid of, to clear the way for all the new McMansions.
I used to work there when I was 17 years old back in 1980 through 1983
It is shocking, shocking to believe that the owner’s trusted handyman could be involved in such shenanigans.
Something is sketchy in Dartmouth? The environmental impact from development on this property is not encouraging to the aquifer below it or the river running by it!