A woman was arrested after investigators say she set fire to a house her stepson had been living in.
Firefighters put the flames out Wednesday morning, but it rekindled in the afternoon and became fully engulfed.
Rex Stambaugh says he’d just moved into the house along state Route 1559 in the Sitka area of Johnson County a few months ago and was working on refurbishing it.
“It’s all for nothing,” he said. “I have nothing left. It’s all gone.”
He says he watched his 67-year-old stepmother, Joyce Stambaugh, start the fire after midnight.
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“She came down the road honking her horn saying she was burning it down,” he said. “I thought maybe she was just playing around. I didn’t think she was serious.”
He says his stepmom had been upset the property wasn’t left to her after her husband, Rex’s father, died a few months ago.
“She didn’t get all the property, and she wanted all of it,” he said, “and she was upset that she didn’t get everything she wanted, I guess. That’s the only thing I can think of. She didn’t want anyone else to get it. If she couldn’t have it, apparently she didn’t want anyone to have it.”
Firefighters say when they first arrived on scene, she tried to stop them from putting the flames out and told them she was burning it down because she wanted to.
“It’s a shame that it’s happened,” neighbor Paula Adams said. “I hate it for Joyce, because she’s had a hard way losing her husband and everything. I hate that it’s burned down. It’s been here for a long time.”
Joyce Stambaugh was placed in the Big Sandy Regional Detention Center.
She’s charged with arson and menacing.
