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Hellfire and damnation came to a Mesa Kingdom Hall last month in the form of an arsonist who lit up the place. The fire caused $500,000 in damage to the building, a church for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
As it turns out, this wasn’t retribution by a jealous god, nor the devious act of a person gone insane from too many knocks at the door by well-dressed folks carrying black briefcases stuffed with Watchtower missives.
Fire investigators say this morning it was just a 14-year-old who, for whatever reason, started a small fire in a trash can next to the building. Depending on your point of view, either physics or God then allowed the fire to spread to the attic.
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The fire department referred the case the Maricopa County Superior Court’s Juvenile Division for prosecution, charging the boy with one count of reckless burning, says a news release. It sounds like the kid didn’t mean to torch the Hall.
No doubt, Jehovah’s Witnesses see a grand purpose in what happened, and destruction like this tends to bring people of all sorts together for the rebuilding. No one (with a few exceptions) likes to see someone’s church burn down.
But we’re still not buying the magazine.
