Hours after reports surfaced that Amanda Bynes was hospitalized on Monday, July 22, following an incident involving a small fire in the driveway of a house in her hometown of Thousand Oaks, Calif., the homeowner of the house in question is speaking out about the strange occurrence. "I have no idea what she was doing," Bonnie Braaten tells Us Weekly, noting that she has heard from people that the actress' parents live nearby. "I don't even think she has an idea what she was doing."
Braaten says she didn't see what had happened, as she arrived on the scene after the fire had been put out by a neighbor. (She was home but watching television in a bedroom toward the rear of the house.) However, she learned from eyewitnesses and the sheriff that the flames were "five feet in the air."
"She lit two different places," Braaten explains. "It had been reported as arson."
In fact, Braaten's neighbor Bruno Corsi, who extinguished the fire, tells Us he was working on his car in his garage when he heard a noise. When he went outside to see what it was, he "saw a bunch of teenage kids who were trying to stop the fire." He also saw "one lady with long blonde hair…sitting on the sidewalk," although he says he never got a look at her face. He only learned her identity today after watching the news.
"There was a gas can, a two- or three-gallon container," he explains of what he witnessed. "It was melting. If it were metal, it would have exploded, but it was plastic. [There were] four- or five-feet flames."
Braaten says she didn't know about the fire until the sheriff rang her doorbell. "The sheriff told me that Amanda was incapable of giving good answers," she tells Us. "I never saw her. She was already in custody or wherever she was taken."
As previously reported, Bynes was hospitalized on a 5150 hold — a 72-hour involuntary hospitalization during which the individual in question undergoes a mental health evaluation.
"Amanda Bynes was involved in a disturbance in a residential neighborhood last night in Thousand Oaks in the 200-block of Avenida De Los Arboles," Captain Don Aguilar of Ventura County Sheriff's Office told Us in a statement. "Deputies investigated the incident and determined that she met the criteria of 5150 W&I (California Welfare & Institutions Code). She was detained and taken for a mental health evaluation. Ventura County Fire Dept. also responded to this incident in reference to a report of a gas can on fire in a driveway."
