ROCK ISLAND - The trial set for this month in a deadly case of arson has been delayed again.
Attorneys for Jason McChurch of East Moline were granted a continuance at a hearing today, with the new date scheduled for April.
McChurch is charged with setting a fire at a home in the Fruitland neighborhood in Moline on January 22, 2017.
Crystal Lawson, the owner of the home says she and two others managed to escape the burning home, but her bed-ridden mother could not.
Marion Dreier, 88, was rescued by firefighters but died from her injuries nine days later.
"I didn't expect her to have too much longer, but I didn't expect to lose her like this," Lawson said, after today's brief hearing.
"He was supposed to go to trial in November, it was continued. It keeps getting pushed back and pushed back," Lawson said.
McChurch was an acquaintance of one of her sons and she says there was some kind of dispute, "probably" over drugs.
She says she is frustrated by the continuing delays and questions why McChurch wasn't in prison for several other felonies over the years. Including a prior arson from 2012.
"He even caught another house on fire, with his own family in it. Yea, something needs to be done with him. You look at all the things he's been charged with and he's never done time for none of it. He's got off of everything," she said.
Lawson says she and the others in the home that morning would not be alive if her younger son had not been up playing video games.
"He's the hero out of all of it. If he wasn't here, the rest of us would be dead, too."
