Authorities in St. Louis are investigating a weekend fire at a black church, the fifth such fire in the area in the last 10 days. The latest, which happened Saturday morning, was at New Life Missionary Baptist Church on the city's north side.
St. Louis Fire Captain Garon Mosby said that all five fires are being investigated as arsons, telling Fox 2, "These are being intentionally set. This is not spontaneous combustion, so they are not occurring on their own."
The St. Louis Fire Department is being assisted in their investigation by the St. Louis Regional Bomb and Arson Unit and the ATF. St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson noted that all five churches are within a few miles of each other and that, in each instance, the fire was started in a church's entryway. "We've got similarities in how the fires are set, which is what we're looking at," he told NBC News.
Overnight companies extinguished this #church #fire; 4700blk of Plover. Investigation is ongoing. #STLCity pic.twitter.com/BqopqOqOib— STLFD PIO (@STLFireDept) October 17, 2015
The other fires that have been set in this recent string are:
October 8 at Bethel Non-Denominational Church
October 10 at New Northside Missionary Baptist Church
October 14 at St. Augustine Catholic Church
October 15 at New Testament Church of Christ
No one has been hurt in the fires and though the fire details vary from church to church, the damage has not been severe in any of the cases. In fact, leaders at the church's are shaking off the fires and moving on. Rev. David Triggs of New Life said of the arsonist, as the church held service outside on Sunday morning, “I have forgiven him, and I don’t want anyone to harbor any hate or anger toward this person (or people). My prayer is on this road of evil that he has an encounter with God and he is forgiven.”
And a Facebook post by New Northside showed minimal damage to the church's front door with the exclamation, "Satan is BUSY, but MY God is GREATER!"
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));Satan is BUSY, but MY God is GREATER! Someone tried to set our church on fire, but the ONLY fire that's burning is the fire we're having on the INSIDE! #Covered #GraceAndMercyPosted by New Northside MB Church St. Louis, MO on Sunday, October 11, 2015
The rash of fires echoes a series of fires that occurred over the summer in South Carolina, though several of those blazes were later shown to be accidental or have natural causes.