A federal complaint accuses Huntsville, Alabama, resident Garrick Rex Rawls of setting a fire that damaged a Mississippi police station Oct. 31, with a court hearing scheduled for Thursday.
The complaint alleges Rawls used fire or explosives, or attempted to, to damage a building under federal law. It identifies the Senatobia Police Department as the site of the fire.
ATF New Orleans said agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and local police arrested Rawls in Huntsville on Monday. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI) assisted. ATF said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi is handling the investigation.
A sworn affidavit says surveillance footage showed a masked person entering the station through a window. It also says an explosion injured the person. The filing describes Rawls as having participated in protests and vigils after Kohen Wiley’s death.
Former Senatobia police Sgt. Hunter Foster fatally shot Wiley, a one-year-old Black child, while responding to a reported shoplifting call at a Walmart. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in October that the shooting was justified. Foster resigned shortly afterward, as EconoTimes reported in its earlier coverage of his resignation.
The preliminary and detention hearing is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. ET (11:30 a.m. CT) Thursday, Nov. 5, at the U.S. courthouse in Huntsville, according to court records.
