A navy decide on Friday acquitted a sailor of arson in a fire that destroyed the USABonhomme Richard, a blow to the Navy because it faces allegations of wrong training and renovation of the $1.2 billion amphibious assault deliver.

Ryan Sawyer Mays, 21, deeply exhaled when the verdict became read, put each arms on the defense desk, broke into sobs and hugged supporters inside the audience at Naval Base San Diego.

Outside the court docket building, Mays study a quick declaration to newshounds and declined to reply questions. He did now not address his plans.

“I can say that the beyond two years had been the hardest two years of my complete lifestyles as a younger man,” he said. “I’ve lost time with friends. I’ve misplaced pals. I’ve lost time with family, and my complete Navy career became ruined. I am looking ahead to starting over.”

Prosecutors presented no bodily evidence at some stage in the 9-day trial that the sailor set the ship on fireplace, whilst the defense chipped away at the credibility of a key witness, Seaman Kenji Velasco, who modified his account over the years.

Gary Barthel, a former Marine choose advocate who represented Mays at a initial listening to, said undercutting Velasco’s credibility was key. Barthel has stated the judge in the initial listening to encouraged in opposition to a courtroom martial, but Vice Adm. Steve Koehler, former commander of the San Diego-based U.S. 3rd Fleet, had the very last say.

The ship’s lower car storage vicinity “became a junkyard and I consider in the course of this complete process the Navy was attempting to easy up their mess with the aid of accusing Seaman Mays of these allegations,” Barthel told reporters.

Prosecutors did no longer comment after the decision. The Navy said via a spokesman, Lt. Samuel R. Boyle, that it “is devoted to upholding the principles of due system and a truthful trial.”

Prosecutors said Mays was angry and vengeful about failing to become a Navy SEAL and being assigned to deck responsibility, prompting him to ignite cardboard boxes on July 12, 2020 inside the decrease automobile storage vicinity at the vessel, which turned into docked in San Diego whilst undergoing $250 million in preservation paintings. They said he wanted to force domestic his text in advance to his division officer that the ship become so cluttered with contractors’ fabric it become “dangerous as (expletive).”

The prosecutor, Capt. Jason Jones, acknowledged in courtroom a Navy record final yr that concluded that the inferno became preventable and unacceptable, and that there have been lapses in schooling, coordination, communications, hearth preparedness, equipment preservation and ordinary command and manipulate.

The failure to extinguish or incorporate the fireplace caused temperatures exceeding 1,200 stages (649 Celsius) in some areas, melting sections of the ship into molten steel that flowed into other components of the deliver. Navy leaders disciplined more than 20 senior officers and sailors.

A Navy judge has ruled a sailor from Kentucky was not guilty of setting a fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego in 2020.

— Lexington Herald-Leader (@heraldleader) September 30, 2022

Jones told the decide there is absolute confidence the Navy “loses the deliver” that morning, however Mays is in charge for igniting it.

“That sucker punch from behind, that’s what the Navy ought to have in no way prevented,” he stated. Mays concept he would be jumping out of helicopters on missions with the SEALs, however alternatively he became chipping paint on the deck of a deliver, and he hated the Navy for that, Jones said.

“When on deck, you’re approximately as far far from the SEALs as you are ever going to be,” Jones said.