Woman allegedly sets fire to car on Kirkwood Thursday, then walks away

Police arrested a 66-year-old woman who allegedly set her car on fire late Thursday night on Kirkwood, according to the Bloomington Police Department.

Police were called around 11:26 p.m. by a caller who had been driving near the intersection of Kirkwood and Madison when he saw a car on fire. The caller told police he noticed the car smoking and then saw a woman feeding newspapers into a car window. He said the woman then walked away.

When police arrived a 2001 Volkswagen Passat parked on the north side of Kirkwood was fully engulfed.

Police soon located a woman matching the description of the suspect and began to question her. The woman said she didn’t know how the car caught fire and denied setting it, according to BPD.

The woman was taken into custody and is preliminarily facing a level 4 felony for arson, and criminal recklessness, which is a B misdemeanor. The police log lists her address as “transient.”

The Bloomingtonian searched MyCase, and it appears the woman was evicted from her Bloomington housing in September and sued by her landlord for over 5,000 dollars. Several community members also reached out to the Bloomingtonian and said the woman was living in the car for several weeks before the fire.