Tag: arson
Police Probe Arson, Graffiti Threat at North Carolina Republican Office

Police Probe Arson, Graffiti Threat at North Carolina Republican Office

By Colleen Jenkins

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) – Police in North Carolina sought leads on Monday about a fire they said was deliberately set at a local Republican headquarters over the weekend and a graffiti message warning the political party to “leave town or else.”

Investigators are treating the incident as arson. The fire caused heavy damage to the Orange County Republican Party’s office in Hillsborough, North Carolina, located about 40 miles from the state capital of Raleigh. No arrests have been made.

“This is political terrorism,” Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, said in a phone interview.

The crime occurred less than a month before the Nov. 8 election. Both Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton condemned the attack. North Carolina is considered a battleground state that could play a pivotal role in the presidential contest.

“We are taking this incident very seriously and have significant resources at the local, state and federal level committed to this investigation,” Hillsborough Police Chief Duane Hampton said in a statement on Monday, asking anyone with information to come forward.

Hillsborough police said a bottle containing flammable material ignited after being thrown through a front window of the headquarters between midnight and about 9 a.m. on Sunday, when a nearby business owner reported the crime.

“Someone has firebombed through the window (of) the Republican party up here beside me and sprayed all over the side of my building, ‘Nazi Republicans leave town or else,'” the caller told a 911 operator in a call released on Monday.

A swastika also was spray-painted on the neighboring building, police said. They said no one was in the party office at the time, but the substance burned furniture and charred campaign signs.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest praised the efforts of self-described Democrats who raised about $13,000 in an online GoFundMe campaign to help Republicans reopen the office.

“That’s consistent with the values that we lift up in this country,” he said at a news briefing on Monday. “There is no justification for the use of violence to advance a political agenda.”

In a tweet on Sunday, Clinton said she was grateful no one was hurt in the attack, which she called “horrific and unacceptable.”

Trump blamed his Democratic opponent’s supporters for the crime.

“Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina just firebombed our office in Orange County because we are winning,” he said on Twitter.

Registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans in Orange County, according to elections board data. President Barack Obama won 70 percent of the vote there in the 2012 presidential election.

Despite those statistics and the divisive nature of this year’s presidential race, local Republicans said the incident took them by surprise.

They remained undeterred, however, starting the clean-up at their strip-mall headquarters and getting back to work on Monday in a bus being used as a mobile office.

“We’re not going to be intimated, we’re not going to be cowed,” Woodhouse said.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by G Crosse and Leslie Adler)

Photo: Evelyn Poole-Kober views the damage caused in a firebomb attack on local offices of the North Carolina Republican Party in Hillsborough, North Carolina, U.S. October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Keane

Mosque of Orlando Gunman Set On Fire In Arson Attack

Mosque of Orlando Gunman Set On Fire In Arson Attack

(Reuters) – The Florida mosque where Omar Mateen, who committed the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, prayed was damaged on Monday in an arson attack, investigators said.

Mateen was killed by law enforcement officials after fatally shooting 49 people and wounding 53 others in a gay nightclub in Orlando in June.

Local law enforcement officers received reports of flames rising from the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, located about 100 miles (161 km) southeast of Orlando, at about 12:30 a.m. EDT, St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Major David Thompson told reporters at a news conference. No one was injured.

The attack occurred on one of the holiest Muslim holidays.

Surveillance video showed a person approach the mosque moments before the blaze erupted, he said.

“Immediately after the individual approached, a flash occurred and the individual fled the area,” Thompson said.

Investigators will work to enhance the footage to identify the suspect, he said.

Mateen told police in a 911 call that he had pledged his allegiance to the head of the Islamic State militant group, though investigators do not believe he had any help from outside organizations.

Shortly after the massacre, the mosque in Fort Pierce was identified as Mateen’s place of worship. It has reported receiving multiple threats of violence and intimidation. In June a motorcycle gang circled the center and shouted at its members, and in July a Muslim man was beaten outside the mosque.

Thompson said investigators were still seeking a motive for the attack and were considering a connection with the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on Sunday.

“I would not want to speculate, but certainly that is in the back of our minds,” he said.

The Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, a major Muslim holiday, is being celebrated on Monday and also could have prompted the attack, Thompson said.

The mosque temporarily relocated its morning prayers for Eid al-Adha, also known as the Feast of Sacrifice.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Photo: A view of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, a center attended by Omar Mateen who attacked Pulse nightclub in Orlando, in Fort Pierce, Florida, U.S. on June 17, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Brown/File Photo

Another Black Church Burns After NAACP Warns About Suspected Arson Attacks

Another Black Church Burns After NAACP Warns About Suspected Arson Attacks

By Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

The NAACP warned black churches Tuesday to take “necessary precautions” as authorities in Southern states investigate whether several church fires over the last week were arsons.

Citing a series of arsons that struck black churches across the South in the 1990s, the NAACP used a Twitter hashtag that went viral this week and tweeted Tuesday, “Almost 20 years later, we must again ask, #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches?”

Hours later, another historically black church went up in flames.

Tuesday’s fire at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeleyville, S.C.—about 60 miles north of Charleston—comes 20 years after the same congregation’s church was burned to the ground by men with ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it is looking into the fire, whose cause has not yet been determined.

Officials have said two black churches were targeted by arsonists last week in Knoxville, Tenn., where a van was destroyed, and Charlotte, N.C., where a church building was destroyed. No arrests have been made or suspects identified in those cases. Nor has a possible motive been given.

Investigators were also looking into what caused the fires that destroyed black churches in Macon, Ga., and Warrenville, S.C., though officials said they have not found a cause or any evidence of criminal intent in those blazes.

The ATF has taken the lead on investigating the fires in Charlotte and Macon. A spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that there was no update on those cases.

Church fires are relatively common in the U.S. According to the most recent data available from the National Fire Protection Association, officials responded to 1,660 fires at religious and funeral properties in 2011, down from 3,500 in 1980.

About 16 percent of those church and funeral-property fires were intentionally set, which equals about five arsons a week, according to the association.

But the specter of black churches burning—especially after the June 17 massacre that left nine parishioners dead at a black church in Charleston, S.C. — rattled many black activists and social media users given the nation’s long history of racial violence against black churches.

A spike of arsons against black churches in the South during the mid-1990s led to the creation in 1996 of the National Church Arson Task Force, which investigated at least 827 arsons, bombings or attempted bombings at religious buildings that occurred between 1995 and 1999. The task force includes the FBI, the ATF, U.S. attorneys, local prosecutors and other federal and state law enforcement.

Of that 827, at least 269 involved black churches, with 185 of those churches located in the South, according to a 2000 report.

“The bulk of the attacks appear to be ‘random’ acts of vandalism, the work of ‘teenagers’ and ‘copycats’ rather than hardened conspirators,” Jim Campbell, an assistant professor of history at Northwestern University, wrote in a 1996 opinion piece for The Times titled “America’s Long History of Black Churches Burning” that was shared widely over social media on Monday.

There were 297 attacks on religious facilities in general in 1996, 208 in 1997, 163 in 1998 and 97 in 1999, according to the task force reports.

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Screenshot: CNN/YouTube

Ferguson: Burned Buildings, 61 Arrests In Wake Of Grand Jury Decision

Ferguson: Burned Buildings, 61 Arrests In Wake Of Grand Jury Decision

By James Queally, Cathleen Decker, Lauren Raab and Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

FERGUSON, Mo. — At least a dozen buildings were burned and 61 people arrested during a night of violence and chaos in Ferguson, Mo., that followed a grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the killing of an unarmed black man, police said early Tuesday.

St. Louis County Police Department officials said those arrested could face charges of arson, burglary, possession of stolen property, unlawful possession of a firearm, and unlawful assembly. Only nine of those taken into custody were from Ferguson, authorities said.

During an early morning news conference held while flames still rose from some cars and buildings in Ferguson, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said Monday night’s unrest exceeded what happened in the days after Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown on Aug. 9.

Belmar told a news briefing that he heard about 150 gunshots during the night.
“I’m disappointed in this evening. … I didn’t see a lot of peaceful protests out there tonight,” he said.

Police were pelted with rocks and batteries as soon as the St. Louis County grand jury’s decision was announced, he said. Two police cars were set afire and “melted” on West Florissant Avenue, the scene of many protests, and at least a dozen buildings were torched, he said.

As day began to break, police still had no accurate count of the damage or the losses.

“What I’ve seen tonight is probably much worse than the worst night we had in August,” Belmar said. “There’s not a lot left” on a section of West Florissant ravaged by arson and looting.

But there was no loss of life, he said, and no serious injuries among police or protesters have been reported. “The good news is that we have not fired a shot,” Belmar said of law enforcement.

Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson lauded law enforcement’s restraint. “The officers did a great job tonight,” he told reporters. “They showed great character.”

Like Belmar, Johnson said the night’s violence dismayed him: “Our community has got to take some responsibility for what happened tonight. … We talk about peaceful protests, and that did not happen tonight.”

Belmar confirmed that an officer in University City, another St. Louis suburb, had been wounded by gunfire Monday night, but he said that “as far as I know, that is totally unrelated to events here in Ferguson.”

St. Louis County police said the officer was hit in the arm and would be OK.

Belmar said he looked forward to getting more National Guard troops in the community, as Gov. Jay Nixon ordered earlier in the evening, but he defended police preparedness.

“I don’t think we were underprepared,” he said, adding, “I don’t think we can prevent folks who are really intent on destroying a community.”

“I didn’t foresee an evening like this,” he said. “I’ll be honest with you.”

(Queally reported from Ferguson, Pearce from St. Louis and Decker and Raab from Los Angeles. Staff writer Connie Stewart contributed to this report.)

TNS Photo/Armando Sanchez/Chicago Tribune