Middletown Man Pleads Guilty to Setting Fire to 90-Year-Old's House

Just over a year ago, Middletown resident Robert Mitchell Jr., 33, of 529 Boston Post Rd., broke into his 90-year-old neighbor’s home in the middle of the night, stole items and set the home on fire while she was sleeping.

Mitchell reportedly broke down the victim’s door while she slept, forcing her to jump out a window into the snow, stole her jewels and SUV, and then said he was only trying to save his neighbor from the blaze.

Mitchell was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison on Tuesday, Jan. 6, the Middletown Press reports. He pleaded guilty to first degree burglary and first degree arson.

According to the January 2014 article on the case, the victim told officers she was asleep when she heard a loud crash and banging, then someone yelling, “Grandma! Grandma!” and yelling about a fire.

She ran into a bedroom, the report says, with a phone and slid a desk in front of the door to block the intruder’s entry, called 911 but no one answered, which is when she made the decision to go out the window. “I was afraid he was going to kill me,” she told police.

The report says she got stuck, fell out of the window onto her back in the snow and couldn’t get up because of her knee replacement surgery so she used a bush to hoist herself up. She later learned she had cut her leg.

Police say the victim planned on running to a neighbor’s home for safety when she saw “the bad guy” backing her car out of the driveway and a police cruiser arriving. The report says the victim acknowledged she had a metal gas can with gasoline inside in her garage.

Click here for the full Middletown Press report.

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Photo: Middletown Police, via Patch archives