A teenager is behind bars, accused of setting multiple cars on fire in neighborhoods in South Fort Worth over the holiday season, investigators say.<\/p>\n
Police said at least five vehicles were torched across three neighborhoods, beginning early Christmas Eve and continuing through New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
“It was going in the air, and it was making the boom sounds, the explosion sounds coming out of the windows,\u201d said Rebecca, whose car was the first to be set on fire. Rebecca, who only gave her first name, said, \u201cIt was really, actually scaring me because I\u2019m like, ‘Oh my God, it\u2019s gonna blow up.’ I thought it was going to touch somebody\u2019s house.”<\/p>\n
Investigators said surveillance video shows the arsonist breaking into Rebecca\u2019s car at about 1:45 a.m. on Christmas Eve, then setting it on fire before running away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were like, ‘Why would somebody do this? Like, what\u2019s going on? Like, are we a target? Like, what did we do to anybody?'” Rebecca said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur community was in fear for a while,\u201d said Fort Worth Police Chief Eddie Garcia.<\/p>\n
Investigators said the suspect followed a pattern, targeting cars parked on street corners near homes. Over the next several days, they said four more vehicles were set on fire in nearby neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
For nearly 10 days, police and fire investigators went door-to-door, canvassed neighborhoods, interviewed homeowners, and reviewed home surveillance footage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were able to piece together several camera angles from different neighbors that led us from the scene at one fire directly back to his residence,\u201d said David Jones, a battalion chief with the Fort Worth Fire Department\u2019s investigative unit.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, investigators arrested 17-year-old Evan Banda, who authorities said lived close to the victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen individuals are taking part in these kinds of crimes, they will escalate to something at some point,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n
The fires left lasting damage to the families impacted. Rebecca said her mother was just $400 away from paying off the car, which was meant to be passed down to her daughters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed it. It was supposed to get passed down to her,\u201d Rebecca\u2019s mom said. \u201cBut he took that away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A teenager is behind bars, accused of setting multiple cars on fire in neighborhoods in South Fort Worth…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":505580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-505579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fortworth","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115869513437321540","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}