On the night of August 1, 2016, a black volunteer firefighter named Kenneth Walker received an anonymous threatening letter telling him to quit or they would burn his house down. The letter stated if he didn't quit, he would regret it.

The actual letter said,

“N******S ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE FIREFIGHTERS. NO ONE WANTS YOU IN THIS CITY. YOU HAVE UNTIL THE END OF THE WEEK TO RESIGN YOUR POSITION OR YOU WILL REGRET IT........”

(via Huffington Post)

On Wednesday, August 3rd, his apartment was set on fire and two of his cats died. Luckily, him and his family were not home at the time. They say they lost everything and the apartment is so destroyed that they can not stay there.

Fast forward 24 hours, Walker's neighbor came out and admitted to committing this crime. Matthew Jurado has been charged with arson. Although he has admitted to committing this crime, he claims that he did not write the letter and that it was not racially motivated. Jurado says it's because of an issue he had with the fire company.

The issue was that he asked Walker for an application to work for his fire company, but Walker said they wouldn't allow him in because of previous work experience. Jurado was a volunteer firefighter for a different company but never finished training.

Jurado is being charged with second degree arson and is applying for a public defender.

The police say they are still investigating the racist letter that was sent to Walker. But isn't it odd that he receives a letter like that and two days later his apartment is torched? You're supposed to go by the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, but it just doesn't really make sense.

Just because Jurado says he didn't write the letter doesn't mean much to me. Many people are way more afraid of being labeled a racist than being thrown in jail for arson, so I don't believe him at all. We'll see what happens when the case is over.

In the meantime, there has been a GoFundMe account set up for the Walker family since everything they owned had been lost in the fire.