[span class="mainarttitle"][span class="mainarttitle"]Three Students Held in Ala. Church Fires
[/span][/span][table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"][tbody][tr][td]
[/td][/tr][tr][td colspan="2"][img]vny!://images.forbes.com/media/assets/spacer_white.gif" height="5" width="5"][/td][/tr][/tbody][/table][!--/OUTER BOX TABLE--][span class="mainarttxt"]Three college students, including two aspiring actors known around campus as pranksters, were arrested Wednesday in a string of nine church fires across Alabama.[/span]
[span style="font-weight: bold;" class="mainarttxt"]Federal agents said the defendants claimed the first few fires were set as "a joke" and the others were started to throw investigators off the track.[/span]
(Watch me laugh when they're sent to prison. Now that will be funny, ha ha!)[/b]
[span class="mainarttxt"]Gov. Bob Riley said the church arsons did not appear to be "any type of conspiracy against organized religion" or the Baptist faith. With the arrests, he said, "the faith-based community can rest a little easier."[/span]
[span class="mainarttxt"]Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee Debusk Jr., both 19-year-old students at Birmingham-Southern College, appeared in federal court and were ordered held on church arson charges pending a hearing Friday.[/span]
[span class="mainarttxt"]Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20-year-old junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was also arrested.[/span]
[span class="mainarttxt"]The fires broke out at five Baptist churches in Bibb County south of Birmingham on Feb. 3 and four Baptist churches in west Alabama on Feb. 7. The federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency had made the arsons its top priority, with scores of federal agents joining state and local officers.[/span]
[span class="mainarttxt"]"While all three are entitled to have their day in court, we are very hopeful that this is the end to the fear that has been rampant in West Alabama," said Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala.[/span]
Idiotic children...19 and 20 years old...many of those churches were lovely old buildings with fine architectural details and stained glass...what a nice advert for their colleges...come here to learn how to be arsonist pranksters...I bet their parents are pleased as punch to see where their money went...
It may sound weird, but I almost wish that is was some sort of a statment against organized religeon. At least then there would have been a reason behind it, instead of just a stupid prank.
Update from a news story on this:
[span class="text"]"The shock was that police say that the three werewhite Methodist college students from well-to-do families who set thefires on a lark, not knowing perhaps the significance of what it meansto burn a church in the South."[/span]
Oh please, give me a f*cking break. Does anyone here believe that?
[a href="vny!://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0310/p02s01-ussc.html"]vny!://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0310/p02s01-ussc.html[/a]
Nine churches? A prank??
Ok, now that would be funny if it wasn't so damn sad.
Ok, it IS funny. AND sad.
This makes me think of the Black Metal days in Norway?! Metal fans burned churches, it was a hip, hip trend!
I'm glad it wasn't a statement against religion, because it makes those of us who are working diligently to destroy organized religion a bad name.
Aw, shucks... just kidding. (Sort of.)
Churches pretty, religion ugly. A strange paradox. I wonder about this.