VSP: Pair set majority of arsons
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AP:
A former volunteer firefighter and his girlfriend have been charged with setting a majority of the 70 arsons on Virginia’s Eastern Shore over the past five months.
Virginia State Police say 40-year-old Tonya S. Bundick and 38-year-old Charles R. Smith III were arrested early Tuesday after another vacant residence was set ablaze. Smith also goes by the alias Charles Applegate. He is a former captain of the Tasley Volunteer Fire Department.
Spokeswoman Corinne Geller says some of the fires do not appear to have been set by the pair.
Bundick and Smith live in Parksley, a small community where the first of 77 deliberately set fires was lit. It is not clear whether they have attorneys. Both are set to appear in court Wednesday.
All of the arsons have been set in Accomack County, which borders Maryland and encompasses more than half of Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
The county doesn’t have an arson investigator, so state police have taken the lead and have spent thousands of man-hours working on the case since Dec. 1.
Sometimes multiple fires miles apart were set on a single night, which led state police to believe at least two people were working together to set them. Police have also said there was no discernible pattern about where they were set, although each fire was set at night. During the evenings, the county is dependent on volunteer firefighters who typically have day jobs to respond to the fires.
Nearly all of the structures that were set on fire were abandoned or unused buildings, and there have been no reports of injuries.
Applegate is listed as the Captain of the Tasley Fire Department in the members section of the department’s website.
Geller said Applegate does not have a role with the fire department at this time, nor has he been involved with it during the arson outbreak for the past five months.
“It’s been speculation around here that a fireman must be doing it, you know, but that one last night where they captured her or wherever, seemed to me a little crude for the way the other ones were set,” Douglas Scott, a friend of Applegate’s told WAVY.com.
Carol Vaughn, DelmarvaNow.com:
Virginia State Police say today Parksley residents Tonya Susan Bundick and Charles R. Smith III (aka Charles Applegate) are “responsible for the majority” of arsons that have plagued Accomack County since the fall.
Police said at a news conference this afternoon that Smith and Bundick were being held without bond on one count each of arson and conspiracy to commit arson and face “a significant number of charges to come.”
Police said there have been 77 arson fires since November.
Bundick, 40, of Parksley, who used a different name on Facebook, commented on one site about the arsons on March 14: “I have often wondered if arsonist is reading and laughs…I myself am not afraid just cautious…I am always on lookout when my animals start barking and when my livestock start making noise. Make (yourself) aware of the little things.”
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