Woman Admits Starting Black Hills Forest Fire
A federal judge in Rapid City, S.D., has accepted a guilty plea from a Newcastle, Wyo., woman who admitted starting an 84,000-acre fire last summer in the Black Hills National Forest.
In exchange for a guilty plea by Janice Stevenson, 46, on a charge of depredation of government property, prosecutors agreed to drop a lesser charge of setting a forest fire on public land. She faces up to 10 years when she is sentenced July 23.
Prosecutors have said she stopped her vehicle on Aug. 24, lit a cigarette, threw a lighted match on the ground, watched as a small fire started and drove away.
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