Cedar Rapids man charged with lighting apartment on fire

A Cedar Rapids man who police say he lit his apartment on fire was arrested over the weekend on a first-degree arson charge.

According to a criminal complaint, Jeremy Lang, 45, lit a fire in his bedroom closet about 7:15 p.m. Saturday. He lived in a two-story, eight-unit apartment building in the 1400 block of Center Point Road SE and lit the fire while other people were in the building, the complaint states.

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Firefighters kept the fire confined to Lang’s first-floor apartment. The fire was extinguished and the rest of the building was ventilated to remove smoke. No one was injured in the fire, according to a news release from the Cedar Rapids Fire Department.

He was being held on a $25,000 bail at the Linn County Jail.

Lang has been convicted before of committing arson. In 2020, he was charged with first-degree arson after police said he poured gasoline on a porch in southeast Cedar Rapids and set it on fire. He pleaded guilty to second-degree arson as part of a plea deal and was sentenced to three years of supervised probation.

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