By Chuck Hustmyre
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| Pleasant Sabine Baptist Church was completely destroyed by fire |
Tuscaloosa, Ala. (Crime Library, March 8,2006) - A task force of federal, state and local law enforcement officers arrested two men early Wednesday morning for a string of church fires that swept across Alabama last month.
Early reports indicate that both men are in their late teens and are from Alabma. Investigators may be looking for a third suspect.
Officials have scheduled a press briefing at 2:00 p.m. central time, Wednesday.
The men are suspected of starting at least nine fires at rural Baptist churches in central and western Alabama. At least five of the churches were destroyed.
The fires began in the early morning hours of Feb. 2 in Bibb County, south of Birmingham, where five Baptist churches were burned. Three were destroyed and two were damaged.
Four days later, four more Baptist churches were torched in three western Alabama counties that stretch along the Mississippi state line. Two of the churches were destroyed and two damaged in those blazes.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) sent more than 100 agents and one of its specially trained and equipped National Response Teams to Alabama to investigate the fires.
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| Police and ATF agents outside Antioch Baptist Church |
ATF put Special Agent James Cavanaugh in charge of the investigation. Cavanaugh has played a key role in many high-profile investigations, including the Unabomber, the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, the rash of church fires throughout the South in the mid-1990s, and most recently, the Washington-area D.C. sniper investigation.
Almost from the beginning, investigators were looking for two men in a dark sport utility vehicle, possibly a Nissan Pathfinder, but as of this morning, it is unknown if the two men arrested were driving that type of vehicle.
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