A woman from Alabama tried to set fire to the house where civil rights activist Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, according to Reuters. Atlanta police are trying to determine the woman’s motive on Friday. Bystanders, including two off-duty police officers, managed to intervene and stop the woman.

the house where Martin Luther King was born in AtlantaPhoto: Allen Creative / Steve Allen / Alamy / Alamy / Profimedia

Local media reported that bystanders stopped a woman as she doused a historic house in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward with gasoline on Thursday until police arrived.

Laneisha Chantrice Henderson, 26, was charged with second-degree arson and trespassing on public property, police said. She was initially taken to a local hospital for evaluation before being booked into the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta on Friday morning.

Zach Kempf, a hiker from Utah, told local media outlets including WSB-TV that he saw the woman throwing fuel on the lot and taking a lighter.

“It was a little scary for a minute because I didn’t know who she was, I didn’t know if she had any weapons, I didn’t know anything,” he told the television station.

Several bystanders, including two off-duty NYPD officers, confronted the woman and detained her, media reports said.

According to the police, the property did not catch fire.

The house, which is managed by the National Park Service, is a popular tourist attraction where people can see where King lived for the first 12 years of his life. But the tours were suspended after the house was closed for repairs.

King, who was assassinated in 1968, remains a hero for his nonviolent efforts to end segregation and fight Jim Crow laws in southern states that denied basic rights to black citizens.