(Sacramento, CA) — A former California professor will spend time behind bars for starting multiple fires that blocked firefighters responding to the 2021 Dixie Fire. Gary Stephen Maynard, a former criminal justice professor at Sonoma State University, was sentenced Thursday to five years and three months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay more than 13-thousand dollars in restitution for three counts of arson on federal property.

Prosecutors say Maynard went on an arson spree in the Shasta Trinity National Forest and Lassen National Forest, setting fires behind firefighters who were actively fighting the Dixie Fire. He also admitted to setting the Cascade, Everett, Ranch and Conrad fires.