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Stranger Torches 3-Year-Old's Birthday Bash After Being Denied Beer: Police

By  Mauricio Peña and Erin Meyer | September 30, 2014 5:12am 

 Manuel Mares was charged with aggravated arson.
Manuel Mares was charged with aggravated arson.
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Chicago Police

HEART OF CHICAGO — As nine children celebrated inside a party room adorned with "Frozen" decorations, a man wandered by and asked the 3-year-old birthday girl's relatives for a beer, prosecutors and witnesses said.

When they refused, the man allegedly went to a gas station, filled a water bottle with fuel and then came back and tried to set the building on fire.

As it turned out, two men suffered injuries stopping the fire from spreading inside the venue, and none of the children at the party were hurt.

Manuel Mares, 31, was charged with aggravated arson and ordered held without bail at a Monday court hearing.

Erin Meyer describes the bizarre and startling scene:

Mares was walking by the party at a private venue in the 2200 block of South Blue Island Avenue Sunday afternoon, Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto said. He saw a couple of adults standing in the doorway of a building and asked them for a drink. 

 A building in the 2200 block of South Blue Island Avenue where a man, angry about strangers refusing to share their beer, trapped a bunch of children by setting the entryway on fire, prosecutors said.
A building in the 2200 block of South Blue Island Avenue where a man, angry about strangers refusing to share their beer, trapped a bunch of children by setting the entryway on fire, prosecutors said.
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DNAinfo/Mauricio Pena

His request for a beer was denied. Mares, who lives down the block, allegedly walked to a nearby gas station, filled a water bottle with fuel and then returned to the party and splashed the gasoline through an entryway to the building and set it ablaze with a lighter, Scaduto said. 

Unable to escape out the back door, nine children under the ago of 10  — among them a little girl who'd just turned 3  — and their parents were momentarily trapped by the fire, she said. 

One young man suffered burns when he kicked the flaming water bottle out of the doorway, Scaduto said. A second man, 57, also suffered minor burns when he rushed through the front door and grabbed Mares to hold him until the Chicago Fire Department arrived. 

Mares allegedly "splashed gasoline and basically ignited a birthday party," Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas said at the court hearing. "Those two [men] probably saved the lives of everybody, including the children at that venue."

Friends and relatives of the birthday girl were still shaken Monday.

"It was like a movie," the girl's mother said in Spanish. "You'd never think this would happen to you." 

The mother, who asked not to be named, said she and her husband had started cleaning up when Mares walked by the rented party venue. No one at the party knew him, she said.

When her husband and another party guest refused his request for a beer, she said Mares started yelling obscenities and swore he'd be back. When he returned he started yelling that he would burn them alive, the woman said. 

She said he poured gasoline on a metal gate outside the door, the ground and some decorations, and one of the men at the party came out to stop him. She said Mares then threw the lighter, which ignited the door frame, gasoline on the ground and some of the decorations.

Another man came out and kicked the gasoline container away from the fire, but suffered burns to his thighs and legs, she said. 

Meanwhile, the mother and other adults tried to rush the children out the back door, but it was somehow barricaded, she said. They started screaming, and some relatives started to panic, she said.

"There was smoke everywhere," the mother said. "We thought the fire had spread into the room."

Neighbors heard the victims screaming and came running with buckets and pots full of water, the mother said.

A man who said he was a manager at the venue declined to comment Monday.

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