Incredibly sad story.  Loss of life is tragic especially for someone so young with so much to look forward to.

If unintended like the story seems to indicate the man will have to live with the fact that his actions were the cause of the death and that has to be very hard.

As for the charges, I am absolutely no legal expert but there are probably lots of reasons why a DA is pursuing it early in an investigation as that is probably the maximum charge that could be brought for the situation. It would be their responsibility to investigate the worst possible situation where the man knew his actions were going to start a fire and left it on purpose rather than just falling asleep and causing a negligent death.  That may or may not be hard to prove.

Throughout the pre-trail process they will decide if they are going to pursue that charge or a lesser charge at a trial depending on how the evidence lines up.

Sad stuff all around.

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