After spending much of Monday in flood-ravaged areas of Lenoir County and still wearing his flood boots, Governor Pat McCrory inspected the damage from the weekend firebombing at the Orange County Republican headquarters at the Shops of Daniel Boone in Hillsborough. McCrory said he’s never seen political behavior such as this before.

“The worst I’ve seen is people tearing down each other’s signs,” said McCrory. “Or using the middle finger when someone has the wrong bumper sticker that they disagree with, which is bad enough.”

On Monday night, Hillsborough Police Chief Duane Hampton released a Q and A news release, which stated the FBI has sent evidence from the crime scene to its lab in Quantico, Virginia to be processed. There is no timeline on when the results will be available.

Hampton said one of his department’s first calls was to federal agents, who were on the scene less than an hour after his officers arrived. He says the department took the act very seriously and understood its implications from the beginning.

However, Governor McCrory questioned why it took several hours for Hillsborough police to release information publicly about the firebombing.

Authorities say someone threw a flammable material through the front window of the GOP headquarters early Sunday morning.

Officers said graffiti that included a swastika and the words “Nazi Republicans leave town or else” were also spray painted on an adjacent building.

A time frame of the incident started to develop on Monday. The first 911 call came in just before 9 o’clock Sunday morning. The caller theorized the incident must have occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning because no one was in the area and the presence of outdoor cats that the caller cares for at the time of the call.

Hillsborough authorities have determined that it happened sometime between midnight and Sunday morning at 8:54 A.M.

Regardless, Governor McCrory knows there’s been heated rhetoric in this election.

“I don’t care what rhetoric you’ve heard. There’s no excuse for this,” said McCrory. “By the way, you haven’t heard me, in 20 years, use rhetoric to incite. I’ll strongly state where I stand on a position.”

“This is anarchy. It was an anarchist who did this,” said McCrory.

To show their support, a group of Democrats contributed funds to repair the GOP building through a Go Fund Me page. Their goal of $10,000 was exceeded on Sunday night within 40 minutes of the page’s launch.

The building was described as a “total loss,” according to GOP officials.

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