Another church has been set on fire in St. Louis, the seventh in a spate of arsons over the last two weeks. The blaze at the Shrine of St. Joseph follows deliberate fires at six predominantly black churches this month. St. Joseph is the first that is primarily white. St. Louis Fire Department Chief Dennis Jenkerson said officials are expanding their search for whoever is responsible.

Dennis Jenkerson: “We recognized a pattern a week ago. Like I said, it’s starting to disturb a lot of people. We’ve got a lot of people on the street. We handbilled today up in the north area, making sure people were aware of the rewards that are being offered by various organizations, whether it’s the state of Missouri or Crime Stoppers. So we’ll be back out again in the morning, making sure we’re going to expand our area of focus, because it looks like who’s ever doing this has expanded theirs.”