Idaho Woman Arrested for Attempted Arson of DHS Building

Sarah Elizabeth George, a 43-year-old Boise woman, was arrested on federal charges for allegedly stealing a Canyon County Paramedics ambulance from St. Luke's Meridian Medical Center. She then drove the stolen ambulance into the Portico North building in Meridian, which houses offices leased by the United States===General Services Administration for the United States===United States Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Custom Enforcement. Investigators believe George staged gasoline cans and poured accelerant inside the building and around the ambulance in an attempt to ignite a fire, but was deterred by responding agencies. The United States===Meridian Police Department, in collaboration with the United States===Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States===Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, conducted an extensive five-day investigation, utilizing surveillance footage from Walmart and Kroger===Fred Meyer, vehicle records, and traditional police work to identify and apprehend George. She faces charges of malicious destruction of government property by fire and malicious destruction of property used in or affecting interstate commerce, each carrying a potential sentence of 5 to 20 years in prison. This incident follows a separate act of vandalism at another Boise building rented by Immigration and Custom Enforcement and the United States===United States Department of Homeland Security.