A Canberra mother accused of setting her Housing ACT rental alight also allegedly threatened to shoot a woman and her daughter and have a man's teeth pulled out with pliers.
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Samantha Gaye Chatfield was refused bail in the ACT Magistrates Court on Monday. The 29-year-old has been charged with arson and three counts of threatening to inflict grievous bodily harm.
Police allege Ms Chatfield fled a fire at her Denman Prospect rental on May 6, and later told someone she'd accidentally started it when she kicked a jerry can over while burning letters out the back.
Police said her version of events was unlikely given forensic investigators found a petrol container nozzle at the house's rear courtyard, but also a petrol container inside the house and fuel on the floor.
They said there was no evidence of a "pour" or accelerant trail from the rear courtyard to inside the house, which suggested the fire did not spread from outside to inside.
In court on Monday, Ms Chatfield said she did not start the fire. The court heard she was on bail at the time of the alleged crime, and police said she actively avoided them before they found and arrested her for an unrelated matter on Saturday.
Police also allege Ms Chatfield threatened a woman at the South.Point Tuggeranong shopping centre in January.
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They say the 29-year-old appeared to have been watching her alleged victim for a period of time, before she approached her and said her partner would "get what was coming for him".
Ms Chatfield allegedly told the woman that another man had disrespected her, so she had gotten someone to pull out his teeth with pliers and do "something" to his knee cap.
Police allege Ms Chatfield said "I'll have that happen to [your partner], I don't give a f...", and later told the woman that if she weren't in the shopping centre, she'd shoot her in the throat.
She allegedly said she'd also shoot the woman's daughter, and detailed where the woman worked, lived, and went to the gym. According to police, Ms Chatfield also stated: "You think I won't go to jail again?"
Duty lawyer Solitaire Zahnleiter on Monday applied for Ms Chatfield to be bailed from jail, on grounds including that she had lost all of her "worldly possessions" in the May fire and was due to have a chest scan on Tuesday for whooping cough. She said Ms Chatfield also needed help organising a coronavirus test.
Prosecutor Bridget Atkinson said those things didn't amount to "special circumstances", which Ms Chatfield had to prove given she was on bail at the time of her alleged offending. She said Ms Chatfield's medical concerns could be dealt with in the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
Magistrate James Lawton refused Ms Chatfield bail to appear in court again on June 23.