At a news conference on Monday, the mayor and police chief of Santa Cruz, Calif., offered a $30,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever set two Saturday morning fires that burned a house belonging to one University of California at Santa Cruz researcher and a car belonging to another.
The two city officials—Ryan Coonerty, the mayor, and Howard Skerry, the police chief—said the university had contributed $15,000 toward the reward, with the balance made up by federal and state authorities and by individuals, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. The police chief also said that “significant forensic evidence” had been recovered from the sites of the firebombings.
A representative of the the Animal Liberation Front told KPIX, a local television station, that the organization claimed responsibility for the fires, but the police chief declined to comment on the assertion. —Lawrence Biemiller
