Update May 11th: Two white thugs arrested in third fire, thanks to a reader, here.
I didn’t read all the stories involving the arson fires in Lewiston, the Little Mogadishu of the Northeast, and to complicate matters there has been a third fire earlier this week in another apartment building that has the city rattled, here. So, perhaps one of the other stories gives more details on the boys arrested.
Here is one report that says it was an error to have named the first 12-year-old boy arrested, so they don’t name the second. This is an update of my previous post on the fires.
From The Morning Sentinel:
LEWISTON — The parents of a 12-year-old Lewiston boy accused of setting fire on April 29 to the Blake Street apartment building where they lived were nearly $6,700 behind in rent and were about to be evicted, according to Lewiston District Court records.
Jessica Reilly, the mother of Brody Covey, who is accused of starting the April 29 fire intentionally, had been served papers on April 26 on behalf of her boyfriend, Charles Epps, seeking to evict them from 109 Blake St., Apartment 1, the Portland attorney who filed the complaint against, David Sherman Jr., said on Monday.
The boy’s aunt, Ami Reilly, of Lewiston, said Monday at the courthouse that Brody is “not a bad kid” and would not start a fire for no reason, and that she believes “he was put up to it.”
[….]
Covey was identified last week by the District Court criminal clerks office. Authorities have declined to name the second boy after apparently releasing Covey’s name in error. Family members of the second boy also appeared in court Monday. They declined to comment, speaking through a Somali translator assigned to them by the court.
Read it all.
Interpreters—a hidden cost to refugee resettlement cities.
This reminds me, it’s something I haven’t written about in years. Federal law requires that “welcoming” (not welcoming as well!) cities/counties must provide translation services for refugees for health department matters and legal issues among others. You can imagine the cost to some areas of the country which have hosted a potpourri of refugees from diverse countries, many with obscure languages. I remember reading that the court system in Montgomery County, Maryland spent a $million a year on interpreters.
BTW, Is this one of those “micro-aggressions” that we were told about here in January that could pop up in Lewiston as a result of community destabilization? We have an extensive archive on Lewiston, visit it here.