http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/volusia/orl-vcross0106jul01,0,2166394.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-volusia

Resident calm after cross burning

The police and FBI are investigating the incident in racially mixed Oak Hill as a civil-rights violation.

Christine Dellert
Sentinel Staff Writer

July 1, 2006

OAK HILL -- Helen Bivins never clearly saw the [highlight]4-foot cross[/highlight] burning in her front yard Wednesday night.

"It just had a real small light on it," the 67-year-old Oak Hill native said Friday. The brightest lights were coming from the flash of police officers' cameras documenting the scene, she said.

It's the first suspected hate crime that most residents of this sleepy southern Volusia town can remember. But community members of the county's smallest city are reacting with more shock and anger than fear. Residents are confident they'll find the culprits who seemly [highlight]targeted the Flamingo Road home of Bivins, who is black, for no apparent reason.[/highlight] [color="Blue"](think about it for a while - it'll come to you. )

"We are out looking," said the Rev. Jiles Smith, Bivins' younger brother and pastor at Oak Hill's Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church. "We'll find out who it is."

Police and FBI are investigating the incident as a civil-rights violation, a felony.

"It's just strange because people in this town get along pretty good," Mayor Mike Thompson said. Thompson said that many of the town's 1,800 residents live in racially mixed neighborhoods.

"This is a generally friendly place," he said, adding that he thought the burning would not be repeated.

"Unfortunately it could be some kid pulling a prank," he said.

Bivins told police that she was home Wednesday night with her 8-year-old grandson and 50-year-old son when her husband, John, arrived about 11 p.m. to find a wooden cross burning near a flowerbed about 35 feet from the front door.

The fire went out quickly, Smith said, adding that he thought someone had doused the top of the cross in diesel fuel.

"I was surprised, but it didn't frighten me," Bivins said while taking a rest from gardening Friday afternoon. "I can't even come up with why that was put here."

She was calm through the whole ordeal, Smith said. "She never cried or anything."

Family and friends described Bivins as a likable and active member of Bibleway Church of God in Christ, several blocks from her one-story home. A retired school-lunchroom manager, Bivins said she has lived in the same neighborhood with her husband for more than 50 years.

"My sister's always gotten along with everybody," Smith said. "I don't think it was directed toward her."

The community, Thompson said, is in "shock and awe" over the incident. "This is like something from the 1920s -- not 2006," he said.

This is Volusia County's second cross burning this year, said supervisory FBI agent Chris Bonner in Daytona Beach. A biracial couple found another burnt cross with "KKK" scrawled on its side in their New Smyrna Beach front yard on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, according to a Volusia County sheriff's report. Bonner said he didn't think any suspects had been found.

"It's just total ignorance, a bunch of uneducated fools," Smith said.