Police: 2 arrested after Crawfordsville church fire deemed suspicious

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ind. — After a fire was deemed suspicious at the former One Way Pentecostal Church in December 2024, two Crawfordsville residents have been arrested in relation to the fire.

According to a news release from the Crawfordsville Police Department, Tanner Northcutt and Dailee Pender were arrested on Tuesday on preliminary charges of arson, criminal mischief and false informing.

According to previous reports, a fire destroyed the former One Way Pentecostal Church building, located at 802 South Mill Street in Crawfordsville, on Dec. 26, 2024. Officials said at the time that the fire originated from the north side of the building and quickly spread throughout the church.

The building was eventually found to be a total loss and had to be demolished because of “severe structural damage and safety concerns,” officials said in the release.

While the Crawfordsville Fire Department said at the time that no one was in the church when the fire started, officials said that they saw a broken window on the north side of the property. At the time, they said they were unsure if someone had broken into the church before the fire began.

After the cause of the fire was determined to be suspicious, the Crawfordsville Police Department conducted a criminal investigation.

The release said this included conducting searches on the suspects’ cell phones and social media accounts, accounting for more than 700 gigabytes of digital evidence with more than 4 million individual data artifacts.

As a result of the investigation, Northcutt and Pender were identified as suspects who were allegedly responsible for intentionally setting the fire.