FBI Atlanta offers $10K reward for Ebenezer Baptist Church vandalism suspects
Misty Severi
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The Atlanta FBI field office announced a $10,000 reward Thursday for information on a group of people responsible for vandalizing the Ebenezer Baptist Church in July.
Authorities said they are searching for a group of 10 people who they say vandalized the historic church on July 3, days after the Supreme Court decided to send the issue of abortion back to the states and overturned Roe v. Wade.
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“The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the suspects responsible for this crime,” the FBI said in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner. “Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade, a member or members of the group sprayed the words ‘if abortions aren’t safe neither are you,’ on the side of the church.”
The suspects in the video were wearing all black at the time of the crime, and they were seen walking down the street less than a minute after vandalizing the church. The group walked into the Memorial Rose Garden and emerged without the black clothes on. They later separated into two groups — one group of four and one of six.
The red-brick Baptist church on the corner of Jackson and Auburn streets is where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. was baptized, ordained, and served as pastor from 1960 until his assassination in 1968. The church has always been at the forefront of religious, political, and social change. Ebenezer’s congregants have run the gamut from those down on their luck to former Presidents Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.
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The FBI asks that anyone with information about the suspects call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit tips at Tips.FBI.gov. Although the crime was committed in July, agents had been following other leads on the case and decided to release video publicly in an effort to identify those in the group, an FBI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
The $10,000 reward will be available to anyone whose information leads to an arrest and conviction of the suspects.