Disabled vets left homeless after arson at apartments in Mississippi
Calera Police Department, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives identifying homemade explosives and bomb making materials. (Contributed/Carol Robinson/al.com/TNS)
January 29, 2022 Gautama Mehta - The Sun Herald
John Russelman was getting ready for his early-morning shift at work when heard a noise in the backyard of his apartment complex.
He drew the curtains at 2 a.m. on Nov. 15, but didn’t see anything outside. Five minutes later, because the curtains were already drawn, he saw a bright light through the window and realized a fire was raging. It had already engulfed part of his building on Rodenberg Avenue in Biloxi.
“I could reach out and touch the flames when I walked out of the front door,” Russelman, who worked the morning shift on a cleaning crew at Keesler Air Force base, told the Sun Herald. He said the flames could have been 25 feet high and got into the branches of an old oak tree.
“It was a hell of a sight,” he said.
He didn’t know it then, but he was the victim of a deliberate arson attack. The fire would destroy the building and upend the lives of the three disabled veterans living at Rodenberg Apartments, who lost virtually all their worldly possessions. More than two months later, the three men still have no idea when they’ll have a place to call home again.
The night of the arson
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/01/disabled-vets-left-homeless-after-arson-at-apartments-in-mississippi/
