A 27-year-old man named Troy Collin McCormick has pleaded not guilty to arson charges in connection with an incident that occurred a week ago Tuesday at Hi Tops in the Castro. As bar owner Jesse Woodward tells the Bay Area Reporter, McCormick — who's been a repeated nuisance at the bar, threatening staff, and had already been banned from coming in — took "a shopping cart full of garbage, lit it on fire, and put it in front of our doors." McCormick is now in custody and his public defender admits he may have some mental health problems. "I’m concerned for how he’s doing, actually, and a little bewildered by what’s going on with him," says public defender Eric Quandt.

Woodward says that bar staff had to call the cops on McCormick back in March when he had come in threatening them, and that night they followed him down to the Starbucks on 18th Street until cops arrived. He was handcuffed and "5150'd," which means he was held involuntarily for a psych evaluation for three days. The bar had then tried to get a restraining order against him, but before that happened McCormick arrived with his flaming shopping cart early on Tuesday, April 21, after the bar had shut down on Monday night. Staff was still there cleaning up.

In first reporting on the incident, the BAR described how McCormick had previously thrown a glass at a bartender, and had been returning to the bar repeatedly since February delivering threats. At one point he said "he was going to drive a car through the bar," according to Woodward.

They also track down McCormick's ex-boyfriend, Ian Armstrong, with whom he did some web cam modeling back in 2011 on a site called Big Cam Tube (NSFW), with McCormick using the porn name Tristian Hawk. Though Armstrong says McCormick was always very "calm and collected," he admitted he had seen him get violent when extremely drunk.

McCormick is being held on $200,000 bail, and has been ordered to stay at least 150 yards away from Hi Tops, as well as one particular bartender there.