Police: Pa. woman set fire with foreclosure notice

CORRY, Pa. – A northwestern Pennsylvania woman tried to smother her sleeping adult son before she set her house on fire with foreclosure documents and sliced her wrist with a razor, police said.

Eve Shreve was arraigned Tuesday on charges including attempted homicide and arson in the March 18 fire in Corry, about 25 miles southeast of Erie. She covered her face and didn't comment as she was led to and from her arraignment, where she was released on bail.

Shreve's husband told officers his wife had admitted setting the fire using a foreclosure notice received the day before and then tried to kill herself by cutting her wrist and taking some sleeping medicine to "overdose," according to an affidavit police filed with the charges.

Before that happened, police contend the 47-year-old Shreve tried to smother her son by holding his face down into a pillow while he was sleeping and after she had given him Benadryl, an allergy medication that can cause drowsiness. Shreve stopped when her son woke up and told her "she was scaring him," police said.

A short time later, emergency crews responded to the fire, which Shreve's son escaped because he heard a smoke detector.

Shreve, however, was unconscious and had to be rescued by fire crews. She was taken to Corry Hospital and later transferred to UPMC Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, but has since been released.

Corry police Chief Fred Corbett said authorities determined the two small fires had been intentionally set, one in a closet and the other in the basement. The basement fire was kept largely in check by a plastic water line that melted.

A search of the residence turned up two bottles of Unisom sleeping medication and a razor blade with dried blood on it in a wastebasket in Shreve's bedroom, police said.

The Associated Press couldn't locate a phone number for Shreve. Her attorney, Thomas Ruth, didn't immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday.