‘Suspicious' fires rattle Reynoldstown neighborhood

"I was sleeping and I heard a big boom," said Latarsha Alexander, 23, who lives a couple doors down from the fire. She evacuated her family and then, with the help of her husband and uncle, pounded on the window of the elderly woman who lives in the home between her's and the one set ablaze. The woman was sleeping but got up and out.

"It was a big flame," Alexander recalled. "It was melting the side of her house."

Five days earlier, a ‘64 Chevy caught fire outside a house on Tye Street a mile away in Cabbagetown. That fire, which occurred around 2 a.m. on May 18, started in the passenger front seat, Bundrige said.

One day before that, another house on Stovall caught fire, this time just before 6:30 a.m., Bundrige said.

Dennis O'Connor, the owner of 309 Stovall, said he'd just closed on the purchase of the house three days earlier and was still living in a rental nearby but had begun moving in. He stopped by his new house that evening to meet a locksmith and discovered that the back third had burned down.

"It had just gotten fully renovated, which is a real kick in the teeth," said O'Connor, 41. He said he believes the fires were intentionally set and that the whoever did it was targeting houses where no one was home.

Fire investigators aren't saying much as they try to determine the cause of the blazes.

"They're still all under investigation and they're looking at the possibility that the fires might be related," is all Bundrige would say.

The first house to burn, at the intersection of Stovall and Memorial, was a vacant rental property owned by Second Mount Vernon Baptist Church. Bundrige said it went up at 3 a.m. on May 12.

A fire report said the cause was an "electrical malfunction," said church administrator Timothy Farmer. "But there's no electrical service to that house," he said.

He and the deacons grew more suspicious after the other fires.

"There's too much of a coincidence for it to be just a random or unintentional fire," he said. "The main thing I'm worried about is it happening again and somebody is living there."

Rachel Waltenburg, who lives on Stovall, said people there are living in fear.

“Everyone on the street thinks these fires are related,” she said. “It’s very scary. I don’t think many of us are sleeping at night.”

Waltenburg called her police precinct seeking beefed-up security.

“I talked with a sergeant who told me their hands were essentially tied until they receive reports from the arson investigators,” Waltenburg said. “She told me they could try to come down the street periodically.”

Lt. Darin Schierbaum, the zone commander for the area, said the fires did seem suspicious but that he'd noticed no common thread linking them. Still, he said, he's been sending additional patrols to the neighborhoods and has instructed officers to look for telltale signs of an arsonist -- such as a suspicious smell -- when stopping cars there.