Resolution: Alabama Church fires

Well it turns out they caught they punks who did this, and oh man are you in for a suprise(or not). Check out the link to the story. Honestly I can't believe it. Why would people like this burn churches. Just doesm't make sense to me. I honestly thought this would boil down to some sort of hate crime. Now we find out that this was supposed to be a prank?

NBC News and news services
Updated: 4:32 p.m. ET March 8, 2006

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Three college students, including two aspiring actors known around campus as pranksters, were arrested Wednesday in a string of nine church fires across Alabama.

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.

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.”

msnbc.msn.com...

So these kids(white, upperclass, aspiring) claim this was a joke? I'm not buying it. Anyone who claims arson is a 'joke' belongs in the federal pound me in the arse prison.

To all the people that thought this was a terrorist attack: What do you have to say now? These were our children and brothers that burned these churches, with no apparent motive other than a joke. Nine churches burned by white upstanding American civilians, who are the seeds of our future. makes no sense to me.


kids these days...*lol don't look at me*

When I was a "white, upper class, aspiring" twentysomething, I did some pretty stupid things too, but my friends and I never even CONSIDERED burning down a church...I live not too far from these churches or the colleges that these punks attended...Birmingham Southern University is a pretty prestigious college, albeit mostly rich white kids. UAB, while they did have some problems with white supremacists in the 80's seems to have cleaned up its image and now has a VP office of Equity and Diversity and has PLENTY of foreign students, mainly Asian and Middle Eastern.
The 2 colleges are VERY close together, let me see if I can Google Earth a map and I'll add a link later

I'm not buying that prank story. They are only saying that to try to mitigate the crimes, imo. At their particular station in life, pranks should involve mischief toward college classmates or pranking another college. Not arson.

I hope that restitution is part of their sentence; they'll be paying for it for years and years.

I agree, todeskopf, me and my friends have done some stupid stuff, but never have we ever considered lighting a building on fire. I'm not even religious(actualy I'm against it to a degree), and still I would never even fathom this idea. Outside of my circle we have heard of kids doing this, but never a church. I'm not to sure what to think about this whole situation. I'll bet that one of the kids called his lawyer after the fires and started asking some questions. His lawyer would have, no doubt, told him to say it was just a 'prank'. We might never know the true motivation for these fires.

As long as they lock those kids up, I could care less about the true motivations.

Read my mind! - post now superflous.

[edit on 8-3-2006 by Strangerous]