This is pretty strange. Yesterday a woman poured gasoline on MLK’s birth home in Atlanta and was probably seconds away from setting a fire that would have destroyed it. Luckily she was interrupted by a group of tourists.

Zach Kempf, 43, a filmmaker from Salt Lake City who was there with his co-worker, said he first thought she was simply watering the shrubs in front of the house. Suddenly, she rushed up the stairs and began yanking on the screen door, trying to get in the house.

“Which just seemed weird,” he said, “so we asked her what she was doing, and she didn’t respond.”

She then dumped the contents of a five-gallon container onto the porch, threw the empty canister into the bushes and grabbed a lighter that she had left in the grass next to the porch. Mr. Kempf blocked her with his body as she tried returning to the porch with the lighter in hand. He called 911.

Mr. Kempf said she had a “nervous energy” about her. “But she wasn’t aggressive.” She relented eventually, turned around and quickly walked away, down the street.

Kempf yelled to two men down the street that she had tried to burn down the house and they turned out to be two NYPD officers who were visiting Atlanta. They restrained her until Atlanta police arrived.

This almost certainly saved the house from going up in smoke. Atlanta fire Chief Jerry DeBerry said, “If the witnesses hadn’t been here and interrupted what she was doing, I mean, it could have been a matter of seconds before the house was engulfed in flames.”

Eventually, Atlanta Police arrived and took the suspect to a hospital for a psych evaluation. They later identified her as 26-year-old Laneisha Shantrice Henderson. Apparently her family also arrived at the scene just before she was taken away. They had been out looking for her using the signal on her phone. They apparently claimed Henderson had mental problems of some kind.

Obviously the fact that Henderson is black is pretty striking. Other than mental illness, why would a young black woman want to burn down MLK’s birth home? To be blunt, if this was some racist white guy like the ones who beat up Jussie Smollett…wait bad example. But you know what I mean. There are certain characters right out of central casting who would make sense as suspects in an incident like this. Laneisha Shantrice Henderson doesn’t seem to be one of them. So maybe mental illness is going to be a big factor here.

Police have identified the woman who allegedly tried to burn down MLK Jr.'s birth home as Laneisha Shantrice Henderson. WHAT HAPPENED: https://t.co/XxL7QgHO4d pic.twitter.com/eXHMAGn4MJ

— Atlanta News First (@ATLNewsFirst) December 8, 2023

Honestly, I think we’re all lucky that Henderson was caught and not just because it saved the house. Imagine for a moment that no one had been around and the fire had been lit and Henderson had run off. It wouldn’t have been immediately clear who was responsible. We all know what everyone would be thinking and there would have been a lot of understandable anger which could quickly be misdirected by people online and in the media.

Zach Kempf, who is white, and those two cops visiting from New York may have saved a lot more than this one significant house. It’s not hard to envision a situation where this could have resulted in 2020-style riots. Even if Henderson had been picked up later, after that first flash of anger, would people have believed it? Some would but keep in mind there are still people who believe “Hands up, don’t shoot” happened in Ferguson. Once a narrative is set, it’s hard to unset it.

As it is, the whole country probably owes Zach Kempf a beer. Here’s a local news report including video of Henderson on the porch and a brief interview with Kempf.