Police arrested a woman on Wednesday suspected of setting small fires at the San Francisco home featured in the 1993 Robin Williams comedy “Mrs. Doubtfire”, which was owned by her former physician, officials said.
Tyqwon Eugenen Welch, 25, of Los Angeles, was arrested in San Jose and booked on suspicion of attempted murder, criminal threats, trespassing, arson and possession of an incendiary device, San Francisco police said in a statement.
Police spokesman Albie Esparza said the suspect had been a patient of the house’s owner, plastic surgeon Dr Douglas Ousterhout.
The two fires set on Monday night caused minor damage to the front and garage doors of the Queen Anne-style home seen in the film.
Ousterhout, who smelled smoke and doused the flames himself, told arson investigators about a “previous interaction” with a former patient, which occurred shortly before the fires were set, Esparza said.
The physician is one of the nation’s leading craniofacial surgeons performing procedures on transgender people. “I turn boys’ faces into girls’ faces,” he told local station KNTV, an NBC affiliate, last summer.
Ousterhout, who bought the house in 1997, also told KNTV he was the perfect person to own the house featured in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which is about a man who disguises himself as an elderly female nanny and was one of Williams’ best-known films.
Police declined to release further details on Welch’s arrest, including how they found her. It was not immediately clear if she had an attorney.
