GILEAD — A New Hampshire woman is charged with arson and burglary following an incident at a home on the North Road in Gilead, according to a statement from the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

Jaymi Lynn Hutchins, 30, of Rochester, New Hampshire, was arrested Thursday afternoon and taken to the Oxford County Jail in Paris, said Stephen McCausland, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman.

Oxford County Deputy Joshua Aylward wrote in an affidavit that at about 7:35 a.m., he responded to the report of a burglar alarm and a hallway smoke detector at 1860 North Road in Gilead.

“Earlier in my shift, Deputy Derek Macdonald advised me that a burglary had occurred at the same address on Wednesday,” Aylward wrote. “He advised me that he had also responded to a suspicious person complaint down the road from where the burglary occurred.”

Macdonald made contact with two women, including Hutchins, down the road from where the burglary was reported, Aylward wrote, and told Aylward he suspected the women and the burglary could be connected.

Aylward wrote that at the residence he could “see and smell smoke coming from the residence.”

“While checking the perimeter of the residence, I observed that the side door… was ajar,” he wrote. “I could see a substance on the floor that appeared to be burnt. The door was covered in soot. This appeared to be where the fire was set.” 

Aylward later made contact with Mark Hanright of Massachusetts, who owns the residence.

“Mark stated that he had cameras in the house, and gave me directions to where the computer was that held the video footage,” Aylward wrote. “He gave me permission to remove the computer from the house so we could view the video.”

The video footage revealed that Hutchins got into the house and began using a “crowbar type tool to destroy other cameras inside the residence.”

The State Fire Marshal’s Office retrieved additional footage that showed Hutchins pouring an accelerant on the floor and setting it on fire, Aylward wrote.

Upon viewing the footage, Aylward wrote, he located Hutchins at a home in Gilead. She was taken to the Bethel Fire Department to be interviewed.

Following the interview, she was arrested on arson, burglary and criminal mischief charges and taken to the Oxford County Jail.

McCausland also said in his statement that Hutchins had been found driving a car that was stolen from a Lebanon, Maine, car dealer earlier this week.

Fire officials are investigating a fire at that dealership that destroyed three cars Monday night, according to McCausland’s statement.

Hutchins was transported to Twin Bridges Jail in Wiscasset on Friday, an Oxford County Jail corrections officer said.

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