RED WING — A Wanamingo woman has been charged with second-degree arson after she admitted to a deputy she'd tried to start a park building on fire.
Jecika Katherine Radloff, 21, appeared Monday in Goodhue County District Court. She was released on her own recognizance and is due back in court July 11.
The investigation began June 19, when Radloff approached a deputy who was parked in Riverside Park in Wanamingo and told him she'd attempted to light a building on fire the night before "for excitement," the complaint says.
Radloff allegedly sprayed lighter fluid on two sides of the building, but the matches she had wouldn't light. She threw two metal canisters of lighter fluid over a fence toward the Zumbro River, court documents say, and threw the matchbooks on the ground.
She'd returned to the park the next evening to pick up the evidence when she saw the deputy and "felt like she had to tell him what she did," the report says.
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The deputy found one of the lighter fluid canisters in the woods near the river; he believed the other might have gone into the water. The officer also found two matchbooks, one nearly full.
