Crime Time

Incendiary devices damage law office in Hurst

Federal agents are investigating whether a Hurst attorney was the intended target of an arsonist who threw incendiary devices into the building where she offices.

Attorney Ginger Weatherspoon said Monday that she believes she was the intended target behind the weekend fire and that investigators have already begun questioning people connected with cases that she is working.

"It will shake you up but I do a lot of family law and family law is crazy," Weatherspoon said. "I told my staff it's like being in the Pelican Brief. It's like being in a John Grisham novel."

Deanna Boyd reports.

Man, toting baby tries to torch Wise County Courthouse, police say

A Decatur man who was facing a misdemeanor weapons charge left a death threat for a Wise County prosecutor on a wall and set a fire in a bathroom in the Wise County Courthouse last month, according to the Wise County Sheriff's Office.

Authorities say the suspect, Johnny Pippin Jr., 26, had his 9-month-old child with him at the time. He remained in the Wise County Jail Wednesday with bail set at $1 million.

Read more in this report by Domingo Ramirez Jr.

Arson suspected in Mansfield school fire

Investigators believe the fire on Friday at Alice Ponder Elementary School in Mansfield was deliberately set.

Fire Chief Barry Bondurant said Monday that arson was the cause of the fire, which started in a boy’s restroom.

He added that total damage was estimated at $200,000.

No one was hurt in the two-alarm fire that was apparently set shortly after classes ended for the weekend.

Officials said Monday that the fire was still under investigation.

Classes, however, resumed Monday at the school.

About 50 school employees joined a company that specializes in fire clean-up, working all weekend to ensure the building would be ready for classes, said Richie Escovedo, a spokesman with the Mansfield school district.

The boys’ restroom was still unusable Monday, but Escovedo estimated it would be open again at about mid-week.

-- Bill Miller

 

Hearing set in Parker County sex torture case

A pre-trial hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 19 in the case of Jeffery Allan Maxwell, accused of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping of a former Parker County neighbor. Authorities say Maxwell kidnapped the woman, burned down her house, then held her captive for 13 days. In what Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler described as a "house of horrors" in Corsicana, Maxwell tortured the woman, until sheriff's investigators and Texas Rangers rescued her, authorities say. The pre-trial hearing is in the 43rd Judicial District Court of Judge Trey Loftin. Trial is set for February. According to Parker County Assistant District Attorney Jeff Swain, if convicted Maxwell faces five to 99 years in prison or life and up to a $10,000 fine for aggravated kidnapping. - Lance Winter

Aryan Brotherhood member pleads guilty to hate crime in connection with church arson

Steven Scott Cantrell, of Crane pleaded guilty Friday to hate crime charges stemming from a series of racially-motivated arsons in December 2010, the Justice Department has announced. Cantrell admitted to setting the Dec. 28 fire at the predominantly African-American Faith in Christ Church as part of an unsuccessful effort to murder a disabled African-American man he saw passing by the church in his wheelchair, federal officials said. Cantrell also admitted setting fire to the house of another man he thought was Jewish; and to a gym because he thought the owners served Mexican-Americans. He set the fires to gain status with the Aryan Brotherhood, according to the Justice Department. He is to be sentenced Nov. 30 and faces up to life in prison. 

 

 

Kansas firefighter responding to office fire attacked by suspected arsonist

Firefighters in Mission, Kansas had more than just a fire to worry about early Sunday.

TV news station KMBC reports that emergency responders were sent to inspect a fire at an office that was extinguished by a cop responding to a burglary call.

When firefighters showed up at the scene, a man who was hiding in the closet in the building came out and attacked one of them.

Police stepped in and made the arrest. The man, later identified by police as Catalino Garcia, is believed to be the same person who set the fire.

There's no report of injuries to the firefighter.

Garcia faces burglary, assault and arson charges. Police are still working to establish a motive for the bizarre attack.

Other details were not available, most noticeably why Garcia was hiding in the closet of a building he allegedly lit on fire.

-Chance Welch

Arizona teen tries to kill friend to steal her fetus

Police in Maricopa, Arizona say that an 18-year-old was prepared to kill her pregnant friend in order to steal her unborn child.

News station KPHO reports that Kassandra Toruga went to the friend's house armed with two butcher knives, a large pair of scissors and a bag full of baby clothes and diapers.

According to the report, Toruga told police she planned to kill her friend, who is nine months pregnant, perform a Cesarean section on her body, take the baby as her own before setting the house on fire.

Toruga had apparently told friends that she was pregnant and her MySpace page even had a profile picture of an ultrasound.

Toruga faces arson, burglary and attempted murder charges and is being held on $500,000 bail.

The victim has reportedly given birth to the baby but remains afraid that Toruga might try to take her again.

-Chance Welch

Severed finger tip points to suspect in Florida arson case

While police in Titusville, Fla., were investigating a house fire Saturday all they needed was a tip, something to help them put their finger on the cause of the fire.

Well, they got both in the form of a finger tip found inside a latex glove left at the scene.

They've arrested the owner of that finger tip at a local hospital and charged him with arson. Now they're looking for the man he told police had hired him to burn the house down so that renter's insurace could be collected, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

-- Lance Murray

Video: Blazing people emerge from intentionally set fire

The New York Post has an incredible video that accompanies its coverage of the trial of a woman accused of setting her ex-boyfriend on fire and then accidentally igniting herself.

The video was shown to the jury and shows 50-year-old Agnes Burmedez and a man coming out of a door, both of them ablaze.  She falls to the ground and he runs into a deli for help.

Bermudez is accused of setting the fire that killed her ex-lover, William Salazar, and three other people in the Father's Day 2008 attack, the Post reported.

-- Lance Murray

Woman denies setting Bedford friend on fire

The Irving woman accused of setting her estranged girlfriend on fire vehemently denied on Thursday that she had anything to do with the arson.

Olufunke Whitehead (left) said that she was asleep early Tuesday in her Irving home with her three children when firefighters responded to the fire in a Bedford house.

"I did not set her on fire," Whitehead said Thursday in a telephone interview with the Star-Telegram just hours after she was released from the Bedford Jail after posting bond.

"They (police) asked about a gas can and my gas can is full and sitting right in my garage," the 42-year-old said Thursday. "I have nothing to hide."

-- Compiled by Bill Miller from the work of Domingo Ramirez Jr.