It has been close to a year since the Shawano-Menominee County Circuit Court has been scheduling final pre-trial hearings in the case of Amanda Bowman, but there is no resolution.
The latest hearing on Nov. 5 had Tara Teesch, one of Bowman’s attorneys, saying she needed another continuance regarding the arson and other charges Bowman faces from an incident in the Town of Bartelme in August 2024. Teesch said she needed more time to review a file.
With no decision on a resolution, the court set another final pre-trial hearing for 9 a.m. Feb. 25, but Judge Katherine Sloma made it clear she was not going to keep kicking the can down the road.
“We’re going to need to have some progress or update, Attorney Teesch,” Sloma said. “We need to schedule a trial or a motion, figure out where this is going.”
The first pre-trial hearing for Bowman was Jan. 7, about the time Teesch was appointed to the case. Additional pre-trials took place in March, May and September, with each hearing having the defense attorney requesting more time to review.
According to the criminal complaint, crews were called to a home in the Town of Bartelme on the morning of Aug. 17, 2024, and found it fully engulfed. Shawano County Sheriff’s Department Detective Craig Rekoske interviewed Bowman, who said the house belonged to her 67-year-old cousin and that she lived there on and off.
Bowman said she had been up all night driving and was running out of gas, so she stopped at her cousin’s where a young friend had been repairing her ATV, the complaint said. She went into the house with the gas can when the dog started barking — “I just wanted him to know it was me,” she told the detective, adding that she “didn’t know why (she) brought it into the house,” according to the complaint.
Standing in the hallway at the door to the victim’s room, the gas can “just poofed in my face,” and she dropped the can because of the sudden flames, she told Rekoske.
Bowman said she and her cousin ran out of the house together, jumping over the flames, according to the complaint.
“I don’t know if I had a cigarette; he asked me that, too, and I do not remember,” the complaint quotes her as saying.
Rekoske reported that Bowman was showing “outward signs of drug usage, including the failure to maintain a stationary physical position, speaking in phrases and going from one topic to the next, and excessive hand and arm movement.”
When he confronted her about her drug usage, she eventually admitted she had used meth before the fire but offered conflicting timelines about how long before the fire it happened, at first saying it had been a week earlier, the complaint said.
Her cousin offered a different sequence of events, saying he was in bed and did hear Bowman say, “It’s me. I’m filling up my car,” but when he opened his eyes, he saw flames coming up from the carpet, “a red gas can melted and a trail of flames going down the hallway, and she’s down past the hallway running out the door or leaving,” according to the complaint.
He denied that he ran out of the house with Bowman and said she was already out of the house when he realized it was on fire.
“I don’t know; I was wondering if she was trying to kill me or something,” the cousin said, although he couldn’t think of a reason Bowman would want to do that, according to the complaint. “It’s just weird that the fire was right at my bedroom door.”
She had been acting strange for about three days prior to the fire, the cousin said, and he noticed she had parked her car farther away from the house than she usually did.
Bowman remains in the Shawano County Jail on a $150,000 cash bond.
Bowman has another open case in the Shawano County system. She was charged Aug. 15, 2023, with possession of methamphetamine and a misdemeanor count of possessing drug paraphernalia.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
