Very little is left of the seven houses that burned on Monday on Lake Road in Webster. Across the road, someone has planted an American flag to honor the firefighters who were attacked when they arrived.
"We have people in our community that are dead because there are lunatics out there," said Jay watson, who lives just a few houses away. His home was spared of the flames. On Wednesday, he returned to see the charred frames of his neighbors' homes.
Watson is angry.
"I'm mad at the government for not doing anything," he said. "They're just sitting around watching the country instead of doing something about it. We've got to deal with those automatic weapons, and we have to deal with the mental health. You can't do just one. you have to do both."
Watson says this is not a political issue, but an issue of safety. We met other neighbors who question why William Spengler was convicted of manslaughter for killing his grandmother in 1980, not murder.
"He was the scary type, the way he looked at people, the way he carried himself," said Larry LaPlant, who used to live nearby. "He used to scare the hell out of my sister Molly. When he got out of jail they should have institutionalized him."
"This clown shouldn't have been out of prison," said Watson. "There's the mental health side. This guy shouldn't have been out of prison. What's he doing out here? I mean, he beat his grandmother to death with a hammer."
Watson toured the burned homes to find blackened debris and the occasional rusted pipe. Just about nothing else survived the fire, which burned for hours on Monday.
"I don't want to watch another one of these in another community," Watson said. "This is my community, so it really affects me, but think of those 20 kids and six adults in Connecticut. Come on. Only a week apart. How many times do we have to watch this?"
