Police: Woman sets panties on fire in jail cell
Police said a woman held in an Ocean City jail cell set her underpants on fire using a lighter she snuck past officers by concealing it in her vagina.
It happened at about 9 p.m. Wednesday. Police said they found 53-year-old Lisa Bergling Kerstetter severely intoxicated and crawling around the parking lot of a 64th Street shopping center, her purse open and her belongings strewn about her.
She had just exited a taxi that was supposed to have been taking her home to Bishopville from a downtown Ocean City bar. The driver told police she had jumped out of his cab.
According to charging documents, the responding police officer tried to help. He made sure she had enough cash for another cab home, and beared with her even as she began to call police nasty names.
"Her speech was so slurred and incoherent that I could not understand her," Patrolman 1st Class Michael Karsnitz wrote in his report. "I explained... she could not sleep where she was and asked if she would like to go home."
As another taxi pulls up to get her, Kerstetter gets more agitated. She has trouble standing, and threatens to "smack" another policeman with a soda bottle she was carrying. She then hurls the bottle at the front window of a nearby nail salon.
There's no damage to the salon, but at this point, police have had enough. They arrest her, put her in handcuffs, and walk her over to the police station, which is right next door at 65th Street.
By midnight, Kerstetter is jailed in a ground-floor holding area. She's the only prisoner there. Inside each cell is a pay phone that prisoners can use to make collect phone calls. There is also, separately, an intercom that prisoners can use to buzz the front desk.
She buzzed the desk officer, telling him that "he better let her go." The desk officer then hears "an odd crackling noise in the background" over the intercom. He sends an aide down to the cells to check it out. The aide finds the holding area hallway full of smoke.
Kerstetter had removed her own underwear, draped it over the telephone, and used the cigarette lighter to ignite her panties. Police said this left the telephone melted and discolored, with the wall scorched up to the ceiling.
Police later found her in possession a disposable plastic lighter, according to Ocean City Police spokeswoman Lindsay Richard.
"The lighter would not typically be in the cell with her, but she had it hidden in a spot where our public safety aides would not typically check," Richard said.
Kerstetter has a Dec. 11 District Court hearing scheduled to face criminal charges of arson, reckless endangerment, and endangering others by being intoxicated, according to online court records.
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