Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Murder in Elkridge Arson Case

A man angry that his wife left him tried to kill her and her boyfriend by setting fire to a house with 11 people inside, according to testimony released this week in the case of the February .

Santiago Adalpho Gonzalez-Miner, 44, pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder in Howard County Circuit Court on Nov. 28, according to court records.

Gonzalez-Miner was one of two men  in connection with the Loudon Avenue fire.

Edvin Giovanni Ceron Reyes, also indicted, had a until Dec. 20; he will be tried separately. According to court reports, Gonzalez-Miner’s wife was also Reyes’ aunt.

At the time of the Feb. 18 fire in Harwood Park, police said , including Gonzalez-Miner’s estranged wife and her boyfriend, who had to jump from the second floor to escape, according to court documents.

The report presented in court stated that Gonzalez-Miner and his wife had an altercation on Jan. 30, 2011; she was reportedly in a car speaking with the man alleged to be her boyfriend and wouldn’t open the car window when Gonzalez-Miner came knocking, so he found a stick and smashed the window. Thereafter, according to the report, his wife moved to the house on Loudon Avenue to live with another man.

A little more than two weeks later, Gonzalez-Miner and Reyes were drinking together when they came up with the idea of setting the Loudon Avenue house on fire, according to court documents.

Both defendants, who lived together on Forrest Avenue, around the corner from Loudon Avenue, stated on the record that they were aware there were people other than Gonzalez-Miner’s wife and boyfriend in the home.

Prosecutors will seek a 20-year sentence at the sentencing hearing for Gonzalez-Miner on Jan. 31, 2012, according to Wayne Kirwan, spokesman for the Howard County State’s Attorney’s Office.

The state will drop nine charges in exchange for the plea, said Kirwan in an e-mail.

Kirwan said that Gonzalez-Miner is a legal immigrant from Guatemala, possessing a green card, but that after his sentence is served, he is subject to deportation.

“Accordingly, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement has placed a detainer on him (so that he is not released),” said Kirwan. "He will serve his prison sentence here."