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Wednesday, August 14, 2019

So anyway, who was fire bombed?

Any follow-up on this yet? Seems a little weird that we don't have any names of the affected property owners in this story.
NEW ORLEANS — Someone set two vehicles on fire in a Lakeview neighborhood last week in an explosive moment caught on camera.  The man fires what appears to be a flare at one of the cars, soaked in gasoline, blowing it and another nearby vehicle up. According to neighbors, it happened around 2:15 a.m. on July 29.

Home security video shows a pair of SUVs suddenly burst into flames, followed by a series of small explosions. Neighbor Quinn Eagan heard a loud boom, ran out of his house and found the vehicles on fire. "I grabbed the neighbors garden hose over here and just started trying to put it out and then when the thing started exploding, I hid behind the tree over here and kept spraying and just realized it’s futile," Eagan said.
That's "neighbor, Quinn Eagan" so we have to assume it wasn't actually his cars on fire.  Whose cars are these?  The reason we ask is because when this, or an incident like it, has happened in the past (and it has happened, repeatedly) the target's name has been of some note.

For example, in 2014.
An apparent firebombing ignited a pair of early morning blazes Thursday in Uptown New Orleans, incinerating three vehicles and scorching a house in a startling scene that resembled a war zone. Federal law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether Mario Zervigon, a well-known political fundraiser, had been specifically targeted in the attack. 

Prior to that in 2009,
Talking Points Memo tonight reports that the car belonging to Brian Welsh, aide to putative/possible Senate candidate Stormy Daniels, did not "explode," as had been reported earlier, but was simply a car fire:Brian Welsh's story isn't quite adding up. He keeps describing the incident as an "explosion" that lifted the car's roof five stories in the air -- which differs from what the New Orleans Fire Department has told us.

"It was a fire. The car didn't explode," said Public Information Officer Jonathan Pajeaud. An arson investigation is underway and foul play hasn't been ruled out. But, Pajeaud said, Welsh told firefighters he'd recently gotten electrical work done on his 1996 Audi, and investigators are also looking into that as a possible cause.
You can see from that description that not everybody believed Welsh's story at the time.  I was among those non-believers, in fact.  But I'm less certain about that now.

There was also this in 1997.
When (Attorney Stuart) Smith tried to stop the city from issuing a music license to an outdoor bar around the corner from his 5,000-square-foot home, Molotov cocktails scorched his Mercedes-Benz and rained down on his roof and into his courtyard. His home was not badly damaged.

The bar's owner, George Mellen Jr., and an associate, Richard Jones, pleaded guilty to conspiring to plant firebombs.
Now, a lot of people don't care for Stuart Smith, or for the continuing cause of shutting down live music venues in New Orleans. But most of us tend to frown on fire bombing as a go-to political tactic... despite its apparently frequent use.

Which brings us back to this Lakeview incident which we can't help but notice happened really close to qualifying week for the October statewide elections.  Whose cars were those, again?

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