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A black teenager is facing charges as an adult for what authorities are describing as the revenge arson of the home of a white woman and her two children. And his arrest, and that of a juvenile, may be just the tip of the iceberg, authorities say. Already, Thaddeus Shields, 18, is facing a court hearing this week on the count, and a 17-year-old whose name was not released is facing juvenile court. Authorities, meanwhile, say their investigation continues and more perpetrators may be arrested and charged in the attack in Middletown, Ohio. The alleged black-on-white crime earlier this week...

Escondido police have announced that an arson suspect has been taken into custody.

SIERRA VISTA — The list of recent suspicious fires in and around the Sierra Vista area continues to grow after local fire crews responded to two more brush fires in a field near a residential area Monday evening. Firefighters were called out to the 2900 block of Cardinal Drive in Sierra Vista at 6:40 p.m. for a possible residential fire, said Fry Fire Chief Bill Miller. When fire personnel arrived, they found a fire burning in a field behind 4948 E. Cardinal Drive. “It was a small grass fire right around the base of a power pole,” and burned about...

SIERRA VISTA — After a number of small suspicious fires erupted in and around the Sierra Vista area over the last 24 hours, local fire officials have requested assistance from state fire investigators to determine if there is any connection between them. One of the fires occurred at about midnight Thursday in the lower area of Ramsey Canyon, near the trail head for Brown Canyon, said Fry Fire Chief Bill Miller. The fire was extinguished after burning less than an acre. On Wednesday afternoon, Palominas Fire District personnel responded to a brush fire in the area of Highway 92 and...

Man started fire to burn bugs in 'deplorable' apartment, report states A man pulled from a fire on Sunday night told authorities that he started the blaze accidentally — while trying to burn the bugs in his apartment, the Orlando Police Department said. Orlando police and fire crews were called to the fire at an apartment building on Lakeview Street, near Lake Concord just north of downtown Orlando, about 11:30 p.m. The man was rescued from his burning apartment and taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center to be treated for smoke inhalation, according to Orlando police. An officer who checked...

A 73-year-old Miami man was arrested on attempted murder and arson charges after police say he tried to burn down his neighbor's trailer home containing two women and eight children because the women are lesbians. Braulio Valenzuela-Villanueva is also facing a hate crime charge over the blaze that was sparked early Saturday at the River Park Trailer Park at 2260 Northwest 27th Avenue, according to a Miami-Dade Police arrest report released Wednesday. Valenzuela-Villanueva was being held on $230,000 bond Wednesday, jail records showed. An attorney was not listed.

The race to permanently replace Cory Booker as mayor of Newark has gotten a little crazy: Right now, former Newark city council head Luis Quintana is finishing out the term that Booker left when he became New Jersey's junior Senator, but he isn't trying to hold onto the seat after the scheduled election on May 13. Two Democrats — activist Ras Baraka and attorney Shavar Jeffries — are running against each other for the office. In mid-February, a surveillance camera caught a man setting fire to an empty Baraka campaign bus and, for good measure, pouring sugar in the gas...

<p>KITTERY, MAINE – The Navy has said goodbye to the fire-damaged USS Miami.</p> <p>A formal decommissioning ceremony was held Friday at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine, where the nuclear-powered submarine was ravaged by a May 2012 fire set by a shipyard worker.</p>

A "goon-squad" group named The Helpful Union Guys (THUG), members of Ironworkers Local 401 set fires, started riots, and took crowbars to the competition in an effort to protect union jobs. THUGs stalked women, took baseball bats to a Toys R Us site, and even torched a Quaker meetinghouse that dared to use non-union labor. Philly.Com reports 10 leaders of Ironworkers Local 401 charged in racketeering indictment. They called themselves "the Helpful Union Guys" - "THUGS" for short - and woe awaited any contractor who dared cross them by hiring non-organized workers. For, federal authorities alleged Tuesday, this "goon squad"...

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A 5-alarm fire is burning at a high-rise building under construction on 4th Street near China Basin in San Francisco. The blaze was reported at 4:56 p.m. at Fourth and China Basin streets. The building is reportedly apartments that were set to open in a few months. The property that is burning does not belong to the nearby University of California at San Francisco, a UCSF spokeswoman said. San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson Mindy Talmadge says there is a lot of radiant heat coming from the burning building. Firefighters have decided to pull back from the...

A Texas teenager set his mother’s clothes ablaze after the woman refused to provide him money to purchase marijuana, authorities said. The Harris County Fire Marshall’s Office said John Carter, 18, started setting his mom’s wardrobe on fire after she declined to give him money for drugs. “Our investigation found that 18-year-old John Carter was angry at his mother because she would not give him money so he could buy marijuana, so he started setting her clothes on fire,” Lt. Dean Hensley with the Harris County Fire Marshal Office told KTRK.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Police say some of the merchandise at a medical marijuana dispensary in South Los Angeles went up in smoke Monday morning after someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the window. The fire bomb went through the glass of a dispensary in the 5300 block of South Hoover Street at about 3 a.m., Los Angeles police Sgt. Rick Rodgers said.

Feds Charge Philadelphia Ironworkers with Extortion, Arson and Racketeering Federal prosecutors today announced an indictment charging 10 members of the Philadelphia Ironworkers Union Local 401 with extorting and forcing businesses to hire their colleagues and defending their turf from non-union workers with violence. U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Zane Memeger announced the charges at a press conference this morning after the 10 union members named in the indictment were arrested. According to the indictment, members of the Ironworkers would approach foremen at construction sites where iron work was being done and “implicitly or explicitly threaten the foreman...

The federal government on Tuesday indicted multiple union members for burning down a Quaker church in 2012. Ten members of a Philadelphia ironworkers union face charges of arson and racketeering in connection with a fire against the church, which was employing non-union workers. . . . . . The group of self-described THUGS—an acronym for “Those Helpful Union Guys”—allegedly burned down the meetinghouse as part of a wider campaign of violence against non-union work sites across the city.

Musab Mohamed Masmari, 30, was arrested as a suspect in the arson attempt on ‘Neighbours’ Gay night club as he was on his way to the airport. But that’s not all. As part of the Obama Regime’s Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), Masari, a native of Benghazi, Libya, was also a cultural ambassador on behalf of the 9/11 Media Arts Center for the Arabic speaking visitors. Capitol Hill Seattle (h/t SusanK) On January 1st, a man poured gasoline over a staircase inside Neighbours and lit it on fire as the nightclub was packed with more than 700...

TFD confirms 2 firefighters killed in line of duty Posted: Jan 26, 2014 3:39 PM EST Updated: Jan 27, 2014 12:49 AM EST TOLEDO, Ohio - Toledo Fire Department has confirmed two firefighters were killed while fighting a fire at a convenience store Sunday afternoon. The fallen firefighters have been identified as: Stephen A. Machcinski, 42, with 16 years of service. James A. Dickham, 31, with approximately 6 months of service "Our thoughts and prayers are with the fallen firefighers and their families," said Toledo Fire Chief Luis Santiago at a press conference Sunday night. Both men were assigned to...

A federal judge on Monday sentenced eco-saboteur Rebecca Rubin to five years in prison -- less than what prosecutors sought for the former fugitive from Canada. Rubin, voice shaking, apologized to her family, the court, firefighters as well as targets of the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. "I was so convinced at the righteousness of my beliefs, that I chose to ignore my own wrongdoing," Rubin said. Chief U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, who presided over the sentencing hearings in 2007 of Rubin's co-conspirators in Eugene, praised Rubin's statement, calling it "the most thoughtful, well-stated, honest, unvarnished apology/explanation."...

GLENDORA, Calif. -- Structures are burning in a wildfire threatening dozens of homes in dangerously dry foothills of Southern California's San Gabriel Mountains. Television images showed several structures engulfed in flames fanned by gusty Santa Ana winds that spit embers across neighborhoods Thursday morning. Evacuations are ordered for houses at the edge of the fire.

Arson investigators were at the scene of a wildfire near Los Angeles that exploded in size Thursday to more than 1,700 acres and destroyed at least two homes, authorities said. Three people had been arrested in connection with the fast-moving Colby fire, but Glendora police declined to provide further information. L.A. County fire Inspector Scott Miller said the cause of the fire, reported shortly before 6 a.m., was still under investigation, but said arson investigators were on hand and working with Glendora police. […] Nathan Judy, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said at about 10 a.m. that more...

According to a statement released by a Chinese Consulate spokesperson on the consulate’s website Thursday morning, a person emerged from a minivan parked in front of the consulate’s main entrance at about 9:25 p.m. and poured two buckets of gasoline onto the front door before setting it on fire.