Security Guard Held in Fires That Burned 26 Homes
A security guard at an upscale housing development was arrested Thursday on arson charges in a series of fires that did $10 million in damage to homes being built at the subdivision, prosecutors said.
Aaron L. Speed, 21, will appear today in federal court, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.
The motive was not immediately known, and a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office said she did not know how many arson charges Speed faced.
Speed is an employee of Security Services of America, a company hired to guard the development 35 miles south of the nation’s capital.
No one was hurt in the Dec. 6 fires, but 26 houses were damaged, 10 of them severely, in what authorities described as the largest residential arson case in Maryland history.
Because of the size of the 10-acre crime scene, authorities believe at least two people are responsible for the arsons. No information was available Thursday on other suspects.
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