A Chicago woman accused of setting fire to a Riverside apartment after an argument with her husband over marijuana has been charged with arson, police said.
An investigation revealed that the former tenant of the unit had moved out two weeks prior and a married couple had moved in because the rent was paid to the end of April. The couple had been using the apartment to party and use heroin, according to the release.
Police learned that the couple went to the North Riverside Mall on Sunday and had stolen liquor. They returned to the apartment where they drank all day and later drove to Chicago to buy crack. They then returned to the apartment where they continued to drink and smoke, the release said.
The woman, later identified as Linda Lopez, 33, fell asleep and when she woke up, her marijuana was missing, the release said.
She confronted her husband and accused him of smoking her marijuana. The argument escalated to a fistfight and she threatened to stab her husband. Instead, she punctured a pink plastic bottle of perfume and poured it on a set of towels before igniting it with a lighter. Lopez told police she started the fire because she was angry her husband smoked the marijuana without her.
“The tenants inside the building are lucky to be alive,” said Riverside Police Chief Thomas Weitzel in the release. “The two elderly tenants that live in the basement, both in their late 80s and early 90s, one is blind and one deaf. There’s no possible way these individuals could have made it out of that apartment on their own if the building had become fully engulfed.” There was fire damage to the second-floor apartment door, wall and floor, including the hallway, the release said.
Lopez was charged with aggravated arson and she appeared in court where she was ordered held on $20,000 bail, the release said.