"Brighton woman charged with arson; Also accused of murder attempt" by Alyssa A. Botelho | Globe Correspondent, August 06, 2013
A Brighton woman pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of attempted murder and arson in allegedly setting a fire in her apartment early Sunday, trapping her 21-year-old daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend in a bedroom.
More than a dozen family members gathered at Brighton District Court for the arraignment of Lisa Brown, 49, who was also charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
Judge Annette Forde ordered Brown, who rocked back and forth and wept during the hearing, sent to Worcester State Hospital for a competency evaluation and to be held on $250,000 cash bail.
Emotional relatives shouted, “I love you!” as the judge spoke.
“We’re trying to make sense of this. It’s just as huge a shock to us as it is to Boston,” said Brown’s nephew, 20-year-old Antonio Stroud of Roxbury.
“My aunt is a very sweet, loving lady and the only thing we can come up with right now is that this was an accumulation of her stress struggling with poverty and her health issues,” he said.
In court Monday, authorities described how the events unfolded in Brown’s third-floor apartment on Jette Court.
Brown was playing board games and drinking with her daughter, Shalia, and her daughter’s boyfriend, Atif Mohammed, Sunday morning when Brown and her daughter began arguing, said Assistant District Attorney Sheila Lawn.
“As a result, the daughter and her boyfriend went into their bedroom [and] locked the door,” Lawn said. “. . . The defendant began banging on the door.”
Brown threatened to burn down the building, Lawn said, and vowed that she “hoped to never see her daughter again” and that she “hoped she [her daughter] would die.”
Brown then set a fire outside the third-floor hallway of Shalia’s bedroom, threatened the couple with a knife when they attempted to escape, and dead-bolted the bedroom door from the outside, Lawn said.
The couple called the Fire Department at about 4:24 a.m., and were rescued from their bedroom window by firefighters and taken to St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center....
Brown was arrested as she returned to the apartment, which is part of a public housing complex owned and managed by the Boston Housing Authority, around 6:30 a.m. with a kitchen knife and a lighter, said Lieutenant Detective Arthur Torigian of the Boston police Fire Investigation Squad....
At the judge’s request, a court psychologist evaluated Brown after her initial appearance in court Monday and testified she was unfit to stand trial.
“[Brown] is extremely distraught. . . . I am very sure she is eager to tell her side of the story,” defense lawyer Terry Stone said after the hearing Monday.
“Most of this story is outside of the four corners of the reports that you get from fire and police departments,” he said, but did not disclose details.
Stroud said that “whatever happened between my aunt and Shalia was due to a fight that just escalated, and she must have snapped.”
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Also see: Woman charged with starting fire in Brighton
