Arson suspect arrested in Redmond motor home fire

(Update: Co-owner of motor home arrested on arson charge; adding court history)

A Redmond-area woman was arrested on a first-degree arson charge Saturday, accused of dousing clothes with gasoline and igniting them after a domestic dispute, starting a fire that destroyed their motor home parked on public land east of the city.

Around 3 p.m, Redmond police and firefighters, Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies and Oregon State Police responded to a Deschutes County 911 report of a motor home fire on county-owned land in the area east of Northeast 17th Street and Hemlock Avenue, just outside the city limits.

The fire sent up a large, black smoke plume visible over a wide area, Redmond police Lt. Eric Beckwith said.

Redmond Fire Marshal Traci Cooper said crews arrived to find the 17-foot motor home fully ablaze and the two people reported to stay there not home. Crews quickly put out the fire, with no injuries reported, but the motor home was a total loss.

Witnesses told police they’d seen an apparent domestic dispute between a man and woman just before the fire started, Beckwith said. The man left on a bicycle and the woman in a vehicle, having gone inside the motor home shortly after the man left.

Beckwith said police identified the man and woman seen leaving just before the fire was reported. The woman, identified as Janice Knieriem, 36, was located at a travel trailer a short distance away, also on public land, and interviewed. The man has not been found.

A preliminary investigation found that the pair had argued and decided to “separate for the afternoon,” Beckwith said in a news release.

After the man left, Knieriem allegedly returned to the motor home, doused the clothing in gasoline, then lit the clothing on fire inside the motor home before leaving.

Knierem was arrested and taken to the Deschutes County Jail in Bend, where she was held without bail on an outstanding arrest warrant from Crook County on an unrelated matter, Beckwith said.

Court records show Knierem had failed to appear for arraignment last Wednesday on a second-degree theft charge in Crook County and it was reset for next Wednesday. A district attorney’s filing last month charged her with second-degree theft, accused of stealing shoes worth $100 or more from Wilco. She was given conditional release on Dec. 20.

Knierem also was convicted in Crook County of first-degree burglary in 2010 and sentenced to probation, and in 2016 pleaded guilty to meth possession and was sentenced to 60 days in jail.