A Bay Park man who admitted leaving bottles filled with gasoline on the Ocean Beach Pier was sentenced Oct. 19 to one year in county jail.
However, Matthew Titterton, 31, has already served most of the sentence and may be released soon, according to officials.
Titterton was given credit for already serving 309 days in jail and received a suspended 3-year prison term that will go unserved unless he violates the conditions of his probation.
San Diego Superior Court Judge David Danielsen placed Titterton on three years’ probation and ordered him not to drink alcohol for the next three years.
Titterton read a story in the Peninsula Beacon about the discovery on Feb. 16 of eight Molotov cocktails on the pier.
Titterton called police from a pay phone on March 25 to confess to placing the firebombs on the pier, and told a probation officer he was concerned because he said he had left a total of 12 bottles of gasoline on the pier with wicks ” leaving several of the firebombs unaccounted for, according to his probation report.
“He knew he had made 12, so he wondered what happened to the other seven,” wrote a probation officer.
Titterton has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and claims to have heard voices for years telling him to do things, according to the report.
Titterton admitted he was not taking his medication when he made the explosive devices.
Titterton said the voices sometimes go away with prayer. The anti-psychotic medication he takes in jail causes the voices to nearly vanish, he said.
He said he thought police in Ocean Beach were harassing him, so he filled 12 beer and wine bottles with gasoline that he purchased from a service station on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.
His intent, he said, was to blow up police cars and an unoccupied police trailer. He said he later changed his mind.
Titterton told officials he decided to hide the explosive devices and put them in a white, 5-gallon plastic bucket behind a metal grate at the end of the pier. He meant to come back and dispose of them, but didn’t, he said.
Reading the Beacon story prompted him to confess, he said.
The fire department removed the bottles without incident after someone found them.
Deputy District Attorney Amy Maund asked the judge to send Titterton on a 90-day diagnostic study in prison because “he is a danger to the community.”
However, the defense disagreed.
“He wanted to apologize for his actions,” said Titterton’s attorney, Jack Hochman.
Danielsen said the case shows the potential for violence, but his underlying mental illness is the reason it occurred.
Sheriff”s officials said Titterton may be released Oct. 27 with credit for good behavior. Titterton has been charged with stealing a friend’s car in Michigan, but the state has to produce a warrant for his arrest.
Titterton pleaded guilty to possessing explosive devices, drawing $1,054 in fines and an order to pay $1,127 in costs to the Probation Department. He was convicted of attempted robbery of a bank in Kent, England, where his mother lives. He was placed in a psychiatric facility there, according to court records.