Woman Allegedly Torches House, Hospitalized After Swallowing Fuel Spokane Woman Will Be Off To Jail On Charges She Set Fire To Home Of Estranged Husband

A Spokane Valley woman will spend Thanksgiving in the hospital after swallowing gasoline. And her estranged husband can’t celebrate at home, either.

MaryAnn Lune Cook - found sitting in her husband’s yard while the house burned behind her - has been charged with first-degree arson, Spokane County deputies said Wednesday.

Authorities sent Cook, 33, to Sacred Heart Medical Center when she told them that she had swallowed gasoline, a sheriff’s report said.

Cook is accused of breaking into and torching her husband’s home at 2220 N. Lily on Tuesday. Cook’s husband served her with a protection order earlier that day - the two are going through a divorce.

The order barred Cook from contacting her husband, evicted her from their shared home and forbade her to come within five blocks of it or her husband’s place of work.

The house belongs to Ronald G. Cook, records show.

The 53-year-old husband told investigators he changed the locks on the house shortly after serving the order. The woman apparently shattered a window to get inside and suffered a cut in the process, sheriff’s spokesman Dave Reagan said. The man came home at about 5:35 p.m. to find Cook in the yard and his living room ablaze.

Although the couple had shared the home, once the husband served the protection order the home was his “until a judge said otherwise,” Reagan said.

Cook was in stable condition Wednesday, a nursing supervisor said. She will likely be moved to jail on Friday.

“They brought her to the hospital, and she started throwing up,” Reagan said. “And it smelled like gasoline.”

The fire was extinguished quickly. But walls, floors and furniture were blackened and ruined.

The yard of the single-story house was littered Wednesday with salvaged bedding, a charred chair and a vacuum cleaner. A tattered American flag windsock fluttered in the breeze.

“They’re probably going to have to gut the whole thing,” sighed a man who didn’t want his name used but said he was Cook’s husband. “It’s pretty bad.”

The inside was dark, wet and sour-smelling. Walls were cracked and in spots, the ceiling separated from the walls. He said it looked like someone got gasoline from the shed, broke into the house through the kitchen, then doused and torched the bedroom and living room.

He said he and Cook started having problems a couple months ago. They had been married for about four years.

He said he plans to spend the holiday with relatives.

, DataTimes