Woman pleads guilty to arson charge
Admits lighting fire in Willits in August
A Mendocino County woman recently admitted setting a fire earlier this year in Willits, District Attorney David Eyster reported.
According to a press release posted on Facebook, Jennifer Leeann Smith, 39, last of Fort Bragg, pleaded guilty Wednesday to arson of forest land, a felony, and also reportedly “stipulated to a 48-month sentence in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.”
According to the DA’s office, on Aug. 19, 2021, “the Willits Police Department, Little Lake Fire Department and the Brooktrails Fire Department all responded to a fire burning behind the Burger King restaurant and very close to the Baechtel Creek Medical Clinic in south Willits,” which investigators soon determined was “likely intentionally set by an arsonist.”
With “dynamite surveillance footage” available, investigators established that “Smith walked up out of the creek bed near the drive-thru, bent over and lit dry grass afire, and then hurriedly walked away.”
When contacted by law enforcement near the fire, Smith reportedly denied setting the fire intentionally, claiming that “her cigarette lighter did not work, and she had started a small fire by accident while trying to light a new cigarette with the burning remains of an earlier cigarette that she was smoking.
She insisted that she stomped out the small fire she had started and was not responsible for any other fire.”
However, law enforcement report that a search of Smith revealed she had a working cigarette lighter on her person, which they believed she used to start the fire.
“The surveillance footage likewise showed, contrary to her statement, that the defendant made no effort to stomp out the fire after she had set the dry grass on fire, nor did she attempt to summon help,” the DA’s office notes.
Smith remains in custody with a sentencing hearing scheduled for Dec. 9, at 9 a.m.
at the Mendocino County Courthouse in Ukiah. The public can attend, but masks are required “in and about the courtrooms.”
The DA also notes that Smith will “be required to register as an arson offender for life with any local law enforcement agency wherever she eventually resides when paroled from state prison,” which is expected to be in two years.