The two men charged in a string of church fires last year in East Texas have announced their plan to plead guilty, reports the Associated Press.
Jason Bourque and Daniel George McAllister are suspected of having set as many as nine church fires that captured attention across Texas. At one point officials believed those fires were linked to a blaze in Temple that destroyed a Baptists Church in that Central Texas community, though that suspicion was later rejected by ATF agent.
Members of the churches allegedly burned by the two men say they are having trouble forgiving them, reports KLTV in Tyler, Texas.
Nearly a year after the east Texas church fires happened, some church's found that forgiving is not easy to do. Tyland Baptist church lost everything in the fire, including their foundation. Now with a plea hearing set for next week, Pastor Mahfood says this challenging year they have had will finally come to an end. "We know what we're supposed to do, we know what we feel, there's sometimes a gap between those two points. So it's been a process it really has. I'd love to tell you we were immediately forgiving at the moment but we weren't, we're human," said Pastor Mahfood.
The guilty pleas are expected in a court hearing on December 15.
