Woman: Cross, house burned
Posted on Saturday, June 28, 2008
FRIENDSHIP — In the two weeks since a white Louisiana native and her three biracial children moved to Hot Spring County, a wooden cross has been set ablaze in her yard and their home has burned to the ground, the woman said.
Authorities are trying to determine whether the Friday morning fire that destroyed the woodframe home that Loretta Marie Slaughter-Shirah was renting is arson.
She said she and her three children were not home in the Donaldson community when the house caught fire sometime before 5 a.m. They had been staying with Slaughter-Shirah’s mother in nearby Friendship since Monday.
The cross, made of wooden fencing that stood nearly 6 feet tall and was draped in a white sheet, was set on fire last Saturday night, she said.
Investigators on Friday had pictures of the cross, including one that the 23-year-old mother provided. Authorities are investigating whether the cross was set on fire, they said.
An FBI spokesman said he could not comment on the specifics but the bureau was called in to investigate to see whether a federal offense has occurred.
“If an individual places a burning cross in front of someone’s home with the intent to intimidate, that could be a federal violation of the civil-rights statutes,” said Steve Frazier, the FBI’s Little Rock-based spokesman.
A teenager was arrested Thursday on state charges in the reported cross burning and posted bond later that day. Jacob Wingo, 19, is charged with terroristic threatening and aggravated assault, jailers said.
Hot Spring County Chief Deputy Richard Tolleson said there could be other suspects in the reported cross burning and it was still under investigation.
Tolleson, who refused to release Wingo’s arrest report, also asked that Wingo’s name not be printed as “a courtesy.” Wingo was questioned Friday about the house fire.
“He was first,” said detective Barbi Koder with the Hot Spring County sheriff’s office.
Yvette Briggs, Wingo’s mother, vehemently defended her son, saying he turned himself in to authorities earlier and “told the truth.” “It was all a joke,” she said about the cross. “He’s got mixed friends. He’s got black friends — he does not hate people. If he knew it was considered a hate crime, he would never have done anything like that.” She said he couldn’t have been involved in the house fire because he was with his father after bonding out of jail.
No one had been arrested in the house fire by Friday evening.
On Friday, FBI agents canvassed the neighborhood, questioning residents about the blaze.
Authorities said it was too soon to know if the cross burning and the house fire were connected.
“We’re investigating it as an arson,” Arkansas State Police special agent Shannon Shephard said after collecting samples from the charred property on Nena Street in the roughly 300-person community that is about 15 miles northeast of Arkadelphia.
The samples will be tested for accelerants and “all that CSI stuff,” Shephard said.
The report of a cross burning followed a party at a mobile home on the property behind the burned house, investigators and Slaughter-Shirah said.
She said her pit bulls starting barking and her cousin, who was visiting that night, went to see what it was all about.
She said she saw 15-30 young men around the mobile home.
Slaughter-Shirah said she snapped a few pictures of the cross, called authorities and began keeping her sons close.
After she gave birth to her third son, 4-month-old Dominick Stuckey, she said she decided to leave Louisiana.
“I’m starting to think it’s safer there,” she said Friday while her two older boys, Elgin Williams Jr., 5, and Malachi Shirah, 14 months, played in a plastic pool outside her mother’s mobile home in Friendship.
“I thought I had the right and freedom to live where I wanted to live,” she said.
Slaughter-Shirah was at work at McDonald’s when she learned that her home had burned.
She said her legs were shaking so badly on the drive there that she couldn’t work the clutch. A friend drove her to the house.
She said an FBI agent “grilled” her Friday about whether she knew who would have done this to her or if she had something to do with it.
She said she has no insurance and doesn’t know many people in the area.
Carolyn Reynolds, 60, who lives next to the destroyed house, said she didn’t know why anyone would think the house fire was motivated by race.
“My little granddaughter is mixed and never had any [problems ], and that little girl down the street is mixed,” she said, standing on her front porch next to melted siding. “I can’t see why she would think that they’d be picking on her.” “My granddaughter comes out and talks to everyone who comes by,” she said.
A group of children walking through the neighborhood offered the same assessment.
“I got mixed cousins,” one girl said, and others chimed in about a preacher they know who has adopted a black child.
Slaughter-Shirah’s mother offered a different view.
“It’s like an all-white community that basically black people stopped trying to move into,” Rene Ferrell said.
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