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Smith County is a county in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 233,479. Its county seat is Tyler. Smith County is named for James Smith, a general during the Texas Revolution. Smith County is part of the Tyler metropolitan statistical area and the Tyler–Jacksonville combined statistical area.
Henderson County is a county in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 82,150. The county seat is Athens. The county is named in honor of James Pinckney Henderson, the first attorney general of the Republic of Texas, and secretary of state for the republic. He later served as the first governor of Texas. Henderson County was established in 1846, the year after Texas gained statehood. Its first town was Buffalo, laid out in 1847. Henderson County comprises the Athens micropolitan statistical area, which is also included in the Dallas-Fort Worth combined statistical area.
Sherman is a city in and the county seat of Grayson County, Texas, United States. The city's population in 2020 was 43,645. It is one of the two principal cities in the Sherman–Denison metropolitan statistical area, and is the largest city in the Texoma region of North Texas and southern Oklahoma.
Tyler is a city in and the county seat of Smith County, Texas, United States. As of 2020, the population is 105,995. Tyler was the 38th most populous city in Texas and 289th in the United States. It is the principal city of the Tyler metropolitan statistical area, which is the 198th most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. and 16th in Texas after Waco and the College Station–Bryan areas, with a population of 233,479 in 2020. The city is named for John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States.
Arson is the act of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercraft, or forests. The crime is typically classified as a felony, with instances involving risk to human life or property carrying a stricter penalty. Arson that results in death can be further prosecuted as manslaughter or murder. A common motive for arson is to commit insurance fraud. In such cases, a person destroys their own property by burning it and then lies about the cause in order to collect against their insurance policy.
Cameron Todd Willingham was an American man who was convicted and executed for the murder of his three young children by arson at the family home in Corsicana, Texas, on December 23, 1991. Since Willingham's 2004 execution, significant controversy has arisen over the legitimacy of the guilty verdict and the interpretation of the evidence that was used to convict him of arson and murder.
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Anti-abortion violence is violence committed against individuals and organizations that perform abortions or provide abortion counseling. Incidents of violence have included destruction of property, including vandalism; crimes against people, including kidnapping, stalking, assault, attempted murder, and murder; and crimes affecting both people and property, as well as arson and terrorism, such as bombings.
Jacqueline Saburido was a Venezuelan activist and burn survivor who campaigned against drunk driving. After a car crash in 1999, Saburido received burns on 60% of her body; she went on to appear in drunk-driving ads and was twice a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She also unsuccessfully tried to become Britain's first face transplant patient.
Christopher Jon Largen was an American award-winning journalist, novelist, social satirist, public speaker, and filmmaker, known for his iconoclastic writings on health and public policy, and his efforts to reduce child abuse. Largen's work is featured in hundreds of news outlets and literary journals, including: Village Voice, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Nashville Scene, The Hill, Lone Star Iconoclast, Creative Loafing, Fort Worth Weekly, LA Weekly, and a syndicated column for The Washington Post. He died of a heart attack in December 2012 at the age of 43.
Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer Sr. was an American civil rights movement leader and president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He was murdered by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for his work on recruiting Black Americans to vote.
Dr. David O. Dykes is Pastor Emeritus and the former Senior Pastor of Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas. He is also the author of several Christian books. Under his leadership Green Acres became "one of the leading churches in America," according to president of the SBC Executive Committee Morris Chapman.
On December 24, 2001, arsonists set fire to the Woodbine Building Supply Company building in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, causing an explosion and leading to one of the largest fires in the city's history. The arsonists were conspiring with John Magno, co-owner of the store, who desired to destroy the struggling business to collect a fraudulent insurance claim and clear the site for construction of a condominium development. The fire led to the evacuation of over 50 homes on Christmas morning, and the death of one of the arsonists. After many years of sitting as an idle lot, it was replaced by a condo building, Carmelina Condominiums, completed in 2015.
The Church of Wells is an American religious group considered by some to be a cult located in Wells, Texas. The group is led by Sean Morris, Jacob Gardner, and Ryan Ringnald, former street preachers who are all in their early thirties. It has approximately ninety members, many being young adults and children.
Church arson is burning or attempting to burn religious property, because empty churches are soft targets, racial hatred, pyromania, prejudice against certain religious beliefs, greed, or as part of communal violence or dissent or anti-religious sentiment.
The Macedonia Baptist Church is a centuries-old historically black church located in rural Clarendon County, South Carolina. It was destroyed by arsonists following direction from the local Ku Klux Klan chapter known as the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and was later rebuilt. Four Klansmen were convicted for the crime, and a subsequent civil suit effectively closed the Klan chapter's operation in the county. The successful civil suit was called a "wake-up call" indicating that racial violence would not be tolerated.
Three Louisiana black churches were set alight by a suspected arsonist between March 26 and April 4, 2019. The first fire occurred at St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre on March 26. Ten days later, two other historic black churches, Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas, Louisiana, were also set on fire—on April 2 and April 4 respectively. The suspect used gasoline at each church, destroying them completely.
A series of church arsons and suspicious fires began in June 2021 which damaged or destroyed Christian churches in Canada. Coincident with fires, vandalism and other destructive events damaged churches in Canada, primarily in British Columbia.
The FBI and ATF tracked 164 structure fires from arson that occurred May 27–30, 2020, during the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul. Rioters started fires by igniting flammable materials within or next to buildings and in some cases by deploying Molotov cocktails. Property locations were damaged by spreading flames, heat, and smoke, and by suppressant waters from fire hoses and fire sprinkler systems. Many of the impacted structures suffered heavy damage or were destroyed, with some being reduced to piles of rubble after collapsing.
References
- ↑ "Two latest Texas church fires ruled arson". Turner Broadcasting System. Cable News Network. February 11, 2010. Retrieved 13 February 2010.
- ↑ Flowers, Rich (January 29, 2010). "Rewards related to church fires". Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. Athens Review. Retrieved 13 February 2010.
- ↑ Livingston, Layron (February 10, 2010). "UPDATE: Communities on alert after 2 more churches burn". KLTV. Archived from the original on 12 February 2010. Retrieved 13 February 2010.
- ↑ Staff, News 8 Austin (February 12, 2010). "3 persons of interest in Texas church fires". TWEAN News Channel of Austin. News 8 Austin. Retrieved 13 February 2010.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ↑ 2 Men Charged in Texas Church Fire by Derrick Henry for The New York Times , published February 21, 2010; retrieved 6 November 2011.
- ↑ McKinley Jr, James C. (March 1, 2010). "From Churchgoer to Charges as Church Burner". The New York Times.
- ↑ "Jason Bourque and Daniel McAllister: East Texas Church Arsonists Sentenced to Life | Houston Press". blogs.houstonpress.com. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
- ↑ "KLTV". m.kltv.com. Archived from the original on 29 July 2014. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
- ↑ "Little Hope Was Arson". imdb.com. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
- ↑ "Little Hope Was Arson". littlehopewasarson.com. Retrieved 15 May 2015.