PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A longtime restaurant in West Philadelphia is cleaning up after someone set fire to it overnight.<\/p>\n
Across from the two locust trees Saad Alrayes planted when he opened his business 30 years ago, someone lit a small container of gasoline on fire and threw it against his restaurant, Saad\u2019s Halal Restaurant in Spruce Hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look into the cameras \u2014 it\u2019s not a hate crime,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the homeless guy who stay outside. We called the cops on him last week for bothering the customers. He asked for help and if they don\u2019t help him, they spit on him.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as the cops left, he was furious, mad, and he came and he attacked me, but it wasn\u2019t hard,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then yesterday morning, my neighbors next door saw him flipping up the flower pots.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fire was set around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday on the corner of 45th and Walnut streets. The fire marshal and police ruled it an arson. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a little bottle of gasoline, left it outside here, he lit it up and ran away,\u201d Alrayes said.<\/p>\n
The damage is minor \u2014 a foyer needs to be replaced. As repairs are being made, the restaurant is staying open.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings happen,\u201d he said, but \u201cwe\u2019re open, thank God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police are investigating further. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A longtime restaurant in West Philadelphia is cleaning up after someone set fire to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[36,422,69,71,70,877],"class_list":["post-198363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-arson","tag-fire","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-west-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}