Renee Good memorial site in south Minneapolis doused in gasoline

Someone doused Renee Good’s south Minneapolis memorial and a nearby pile of wood with gasoline and started a fire at about 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17.

A fence was charred, and several items in the memorial were damaged, but the memorial site at 34^th Street and Portland Avenue wasn’t burned down. No one was injured, Minneapolis police said.

Photojournalist Ryan Vizzions, 43, smelled gasoline from inside his van, which was parked near the memorial site.

“I looked out my windshield and I see orange,” he said. “My eyes lit up.”

Vizzions jumped out of the van after seeing the flames. Neighbors who live in the apartment building in front of Good’s memorial used two fire extinguishers to put out the blaze, he said.

Community members had covered the memorial site with a tarp earlier to protect it from the rain.

“We’ve been hypervigilant in our neighborhood and obviously everyone’s keeping an eye out all of the time,” said Wren Clinefelter, 23, who lives near the memorial. “So it’s definitely very disheartening to hear that someone would try and burn down a memorial for a woman who was killed in our neighborhood.”

Minneapolis Council Member Jason Chavez, who represents the Ward 9 neighborhood, called the act “despicable.”

“I want to thank the neighbors and observers who helped extinguish the fire,” he said.