A Minnesota man suspected of starting a fire in an RV in Dallas that killed a woman inside was tracked down on a Stearns County stretch of interstate Friday and arrested by federal authorities, officials said.
Lamont Curtis Richardson, 30, of St. Cloud, was captured on Interstate 94 near Sauk Centre by the U.S. Marshals Service and booked into the Stearns County jail on a charge of arson, according to a jail official. Authorities have yet to say what information led to the discovery of Richardson.
Court records in Minnesota disclose that police in Dallas have been looking for Richardson in connection with the blaze on Oct. 19 outside a home that killed 68-year-old Leslie Denise McBride and her pet dog. Flames also damaged the adjacent home, fire officials said.
Nine days after McBride’s death, Apple Valley police searched a woman’s home in the 15700 block of Fjord Avenue and seized various documents bearing Richardson’s name, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Dakota County District Court.
A second police filing won court permission to collect a woman’s DNA as well as data from her cellphone. The filing noted that the phone had a protective blue Dallas Cowboys case.
As of late Friday afternoon, authorities had not announced whether the woman is considered a suspect in the case. The Minnesota Star Tribune generally does not identify people before they are charged.
Law enforcement in Texas and Minnesota have not revealed a possible motive for the arson. What the filings spell out is what Dallas investigators believe are some of the movements of Richardson and the woman before, during and shortly after the deadly fire:
Police suspect that a car was rented by the woman from Hertz at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for the time period of Oct. 3-22 and driven nearly 1,000 miles to a Dallas neighborhood.
