D\ufeffetectives have charged a man following an alleged arson attack on a church in Ballarat on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Witnesses alleged the man was acting erratically inside the church on Lydiard Street South at around 3pm on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Police allege the man set a lectern, altar and other antique furniture alight before smashing a window and fleeing the scene.<\/p>\n
The fire was extinguished and the d\ufeffamage was estimated to be around $75,000.<\/p>\n
Two men were in the church at the time but were uninjured.<\/p>\n
Detectives executed a search warrant at a property on Bell Street in Redan and arrested a 53-year-old man yesterday.\ufeff<\/p>\n
“Our team of detectives demonstrated their efficiency and skill in identifying, locating, and arresting the offender for this incident in under 24 hours,” Detective Sergeant Glen Melder said.<\/p>\n
“We understand that a church is a safe space for many, and it was important for us to find the offender and hold him to account as quickly as possible.”<\/p>\n
The Redan man is facing multiple charges, including arson, three counts of criminal damage, unlawful assault and possession of a prohibited weapon.<\/p>\n
\ufeffHe appeared at court yesterday before being bailed out to appear again on Monday.<\/p>\n
The incident is not believed to be religiously motivated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"D\ufeffetectives have charged a man following an alleged arson attack on a church in Ballarat on Thursday. Witnesses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-286259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}