Truesee's Daily Wonder

A Milton man set his parents' house on fire early Monday, then surrendered to authorities, saying his mental illness made it difficult to live in society, and he wanted to go to jail, police and prosecutors said.

Mattie Salminen, 28, was jailed lacking $25,000 bail. A judge ordered a competency hearing for him.

According to court documents, Salminen was living in his parents house at 35 Cherry St. in Milton when, at about 5:30 a.m. Monday, while his parents were sleeping upstairs, he retrieved a gasoline can from a shed in back of the house, tossed fuel into a crawl space and set it alight.

The resulting explosion woke up Salminen's parents, Karlo and Carolyn Salminen, who escaped the home without injury, police said. The couple said their son has schizophrenia that is controlled by medication, but were unsure whether he took the medication Monday morning.

Mattie Salminen approached a police officer and said he wanted to surrender at about 8:40 a.m. at a Simon's convenience store on Park Street in Burlington, according to court papers. He told police he wanted to go back to jail because he couldn't make it out in the real world, police said.

Police asked if he intended to hurt his parents, and Salminen said he didn't, but he also was somewhat unconcerned by the possibility, according to court papers.

The house suffered fire, water and smoke damage. The fire melted soldering on a water pipe in the crawl space, which burst and kept the flames in check until Milton firefighters arrived, investigators said.