{"id":956663,"date":"2026-07-24T17:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/956663\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T17:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:46:13","slug":"3-charged-with-arson-after-beach-park-bar-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/956663\/","title":{"rendered":"3 charged with arson after Beach Park bar fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three men have been charged with arson after a fire at a bar in Beach Park, Illinois, last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Lake County Sheriff’s Department said Fernando Mejia, 18, Fulgencio Benites-Gaspar, 36, and Estivent Mena-Ferrera, 21, were charged with felony counts of arson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On July 17, a fire broke out at Social Pub in the 30000 block of North Sheridan Road, causing what the Lake County Sheriff’s Office called “catastrophic damage.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fire was determined to be suspicious, and a vehicle was seen on surveillance video in the area where the fire started.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Officials located the vehicle on July 23 in North Chicago and interviewed two people possibly connected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Investigators said Mejia and Benites-Gaspar were removed from the bar several weeks prior and “developed a plan to set the business on fire.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The people charged are being held at the Lake County jail and are expected in court on Friday morning.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three men have been charged with arson after a fire at a bar in Beach Park, Illinois, last…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":803976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[8339,960,5386,1818,4010],"class_list":["post-956663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-arson","tag-chicago","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-lake-county"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116976208194637773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}