Report of shots fired near disputed Tennessee mosque site being investigated, earlier fire deemed arson

Posted on Sunday, August 29, 2010, 3:30 pm by Paddy
Google GmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInStumbleUponRedditFarkDiggTumblrBlogger PostDeliciousFriendFeedNewsVineGoogle BookmarksGoogle ReaderMultiplyPosterousEmailBookmark/FavoritesWordPressShare

Things get uglier and uglier. Not only have they declared that the fire the other night was arson, seems we’re exporting our xenophobia to Japan.

Rutherford County Sheriff’s deputies are investigating a complaint about shots being fired this afternoon near the construction site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro on Veals Road off Bradyville Pike.

The report came just hours after a fire of suspicious nature damaged construction equipment at the site.

A group of congregation members was at the site looking at the damage done to construction equipment by the fire overnight when they heard nine shots fired from two directions.

The incident occurred around 3:15 p.m. The congregation members reported hearing six shots coming from one direction, and about three minutes later they heard three more shots from another direction, said Saleh Sbenaty, a congregation member and MTSU professor.

(snip)

One piece of construction equipment was damaged over the weekend when it was burned, and three other pieces of equipment were doused with some sort of accelerant, Sbenaty said.

The sheriff’s office, FBI and Bureau of ATF are investigating the fire.

Google GmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInStumbleUponRedditFarkDiggTumblrBlogger PostDeliciousFriendFeedNewsVineGoogle BookmarksGoogle ReaderMultiplyPosterousEmailBookmark/FavoritesWordPressShare
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Photographs on The Political Carnival:
Please read our policy on images from non-TPC sources in the sidebar to your right.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

  • http://www.transformersactionfigures.com Heather

    The person(s) who did this is a criminal likely motivated by irrational hatred. It's their fault anyway. They shouldn't be building the mosque 800+ miles from Ground Zero in the first place

  • Marnie

    At least we do have the hate crimes legislation with its extra jail time, to allow bigots to think about with their acts have cost them.

    Whether the realization that this type of crime is now automatically a federal crime subject to FBI investigation and heavier prison terms will be any deterrent remains to be seen, but there is less likely hood that the federal police will over look these crimes as just pranks and the acts of one of the good ol' boys as the local police sometimes do.

  • Lion Blade

    About the level of xenophobia in Japan, I hadn't seen any news of it on NHK News website from Japan, yet, but I could ask my best friend and my teacher if they have heard anything about. Although, anything is possible at this point. Anyhow, off-topic, I did read up info on the Tea Party rally on NHK News and I couldn't believe that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s own niece dared to desecrate her uncle's memory by going to the rally as well as speaking at it.