Woman accused of setting car afire with child inside
A Washington woman faces charges after witnesses told police she set a vehicle on fire while she and a child were inside Wednesday in Fayette County.
Marketta J. Walker, 24, faces charges including attempted homicide, kidnapping, arson, criminal mischief, theft, terroristic threats, child endangerment, reckless endangerment and driving with a suspended license in connection with an incident Wednesday night.
Police were dispatched to a crash on Georges Fairchance Road in Georges Township about 7:30 p.m. Witnesses told a state trooper at the scene they saw Walker, who allegedly was driving her aunt’s 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt, crash into a fence. One man who saw the crash said Walker refused to roll down the windows or open the doors of the car.
Another man at the scene said he watched Walker attempt to light a piece of paper while she and the child sat in the back seat. She then crawled into the front seat and allegedly lit the carpet. A witness smashed a window with a hammer from his truck and unlocked the door.
That witness said he tried pulling the child from the car, but Walker grabbed the boy by the neck and threatened to break his neck before the witness wrested the child from her with the help of another passerby, according to an affidavit supporting charges against Walker.
The car burned after Walker and the child were out of it. In court papers, a trooper described the inside of the vehicle as “completely destroyed by fire.”
Patricia Barnes, Walker’s aunt, told police she had brought her niece, who she said is a paranoid schizophrenic, from Barnes’ home in Washington to Walker’s mother’s house in Uniontown.
The two older women planned to take Walker, who reportedly had been acting strangely, to Highlands Hospital, but Walker refused to get in her mother’s vehicle. Instead, she got into her aunt’s Chevy and allegedly drove off, striking two cars.
State police said the boy, who has a disability, is Barnes’ nephew, but they did not indicate how he is related to Walker.
Walker is being held in Fayette County Jail. District Judge Wendy D. Dennis set bond at $200,000.