Skyler Imel

Introduction

Skyler D. Imel is a 31-year-old Wichita man who set a fire inside an apartment building where families lived — but not before announcing it in writing. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas, Imel used a red Sharpie to write “Sam apparment 2502 is geting killed” on the bedroom wall of a vacant unit, disabled the unit’s smoke alarm, and then started a fire inside the bedroom. He followed that by attempting a second fire at apartment No. 2502 — an occupied unit — by throwing a Molotov cocktail at its front entryway. Imel pleaded guilty to one count of arson, and a federal judge sentenced him to 77 months in prison.

Background Information

The target was an apartment complex on West Central Avenue in Wichita, a building with families living in it. The fire Imel set in March 2023 started in the bedroom of a vacant unit — but the written threat named apartment 2502, and his second attempt that day was directed squarely at that occupied apartment. The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency whose jurisdiction covers arson and explosives, and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ola Odeyemi in the District of Kansas. The sequence — written warning, disabled alarm, first fire, second fire at the named unit — is what the court record documents, and what the sentencing announcement emphasizes.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Skyler D. Imel pleaded guilty to one count of arson and was sentenced to 77 months in federal prison for setting a fire in an apartment building where families lived.

In March 2023, Imel intentionally damaged the West Central Avenue apartment complex by setting a fire inside the bedroom of a vacant unit. Before starting the fire, he wrote a message on the bedroom wall in red Sharpie: “Sam apparment 2502 is geting killed.” The spelling is his, preserved in the court record. He also disabled a smoke alarm before igniting the blaze.

The fire was only the first act. Imel attempted to set a second fire at apartment No. 2502 by throwing a Molotov cocktail at its front entryway — and that apartment was occupied at the time. U.S. Attorney Ryan A. Kriegshauser said in the announcement, “There were families living in the apartment complex so this incident could have easily turned into a horrific tragedy,” and pointed to the alarm as evidence of intent: “The fact that the defendant disabled the smoke detector indicates he wanted the fire to have time to spread before it was likely to be noticed, increasing the danger to the building’s residents.”

The case ended with a guilty plea to a single count of arson and a 77-month federal sentence — six years and five months for a fire spree that, per the government’s announcement, was aimed in writing at a specific occupied apartment.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The announcement of the sentence came from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas, with the ATF credited as the investigating agency. The government’s framing centered on the residents: a building full of families, a disabled smoke alarm, an occupied apartment named on the wall in marker, and a thrown incendiary device. The consequences for Imel are a felony arson conviction and 77 months in federal prison. The consequences for the building were the damage to the vacant unit and the danger the Molotov cocktail posed to apartment 2502’s occupants — a danger, per the U.S. Attorney’s stated reading, that the disabled alarm was meant to extend. The public record of the case is unusually legible for an arson: the perpetrator announced his target before acting.

Current Status

Imel is a sentenced federal inmate serving 77 months following his guilty plea to one count of arson in the District of Kansas. The sentencing announcement does not name the sentencing judge, does not describe a supervised-release term, and does not report any appeal. No additional charges — including any tied to the Molotov cocktail attempt or to the person named in the wall message — are noted in the release, which documents the case only through the single arson count to which he pleaded and the sentence imposed for it.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Imel’s documented life is the case itself: a 31-year-old Wichita resident with a federal arson conviction and a six-and-a-half-year sentence. The written threat and the preserved misspellings make the case a stark example in the ATF’s arson docket — a fire set not for insurance or impulse but, per the government’s account, preceded by a named target and a sabotaged alarm. For the residents of the West Central Avenue complex, the incident became the near-miss the U.S. Attorney described; for Imel, the Sharpie message he left on the wall became the centerpiece of the record that sent him to prison.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Kansas, “Federal judge sentences Wichita man to prison for setting fire to apartment,” November 2026. source