Teen charged after setting Florida hotel couch on fire after fight with mom

A teenager was arrested on Tuesday after she set a couch at the hotel she was staying at in Florida on fire after a fight with her mom, authorities reported. 

Isabella Faith Adeline Garcia, 16, from Peoria, Illinois was staying at the Ocala Hilton on SW 36th Avenue with her mother when she called 911 to report that she had started a fire at around 3:20 a.m., Ocala police department posted on Facebook. 

“I got into a fight with my mom,” she told dispatchers, according to the affidavit obtained by FOX 35 Orlando. “I got into a fight with my mom and then she got another room. She wasn’t talking to me and then she wouldn’t answer any of my calls or text messages. I don’t know. It was like this couch in the lobby … I don’t know what to do.”

The mother and daughter had gotten into an argument during their stay in the hotel. The teen called her mom a “horrible mother” and told her that she hated her. 

Thinking that such a fight was nothing out of the ordinary since it had happened before, the mom left the room to prevent the argument from escalating. About 15 minutes later, the fire alarms at the hotel went off. The teen had lit up the couch in the lobby with a lighter.

Luckily, the 320 guests staying at the hotel were evacuated from the premises with no injuries and the fire was extinguished within minutes after first responders arrived at the scene.  

“[She] has never done anything like this,” the mom told police. “She is a good girl.” 

The 16-year-old girl was charged with arson of an occupied structure and criminal mischief, according to the affidavit. 

The hotel said that the damage is estimated to cost “a couple hundred thousand dollars.”