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.
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.
