Suspect in Missouri Abortion Clinic Arson Now Implicated in Mosque Firebombing
A suspect arrested this month for twice attempting to burn down a Joplin, Mo., abortion clinic now has been implicated in last year’s firebombing that destroyed a mosque in the same community.
Jedediah Stout, 29, an Iraq war veteran who described himself as “sort of homeless,” was charged last week in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Missouri with attempted arson of a building used in interstate commerce. He is being held without bond as a flight risk and danger to the community.
Stout was arrested by police on Oct. 4 walking on railroad tracks in Joplin, just a few blocks from a Planned Parenthood clinic where someone attempted to throw burning backpacks on the roof of the building two days in a row, court documents say.
After admitting involvement in those arson attempts, the defendant “confessed to setting fires at the Islamic Society of Joplin’s building on July 4, 2012, and on Aug. 7, 2012,” a motion for the suspect’s detention says. The mosque was completely destroyed in the second attempt.
Stout is a U.S. Army veteran who served as a combat engineer from October 2002 to July 2005, and was deployed to Iraq for a year beginning in September 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported in yesterday’s editions.
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