Four Maryland men charged in burglary spree targeting fire-damaged homes

Tonight, four men are accused of burglarizing homes already devastated by fires in Fairfax County. Investigators say the suspects preyed on vulnerable families up and down the East Coast. Fox has Bob Barnard in Fairfax with how police finally caught them. The suspects are not accused of setting any of the fires, just finding the homes afterward and burglarizing them once they've been condemned. Now, this one behind me, the fire here was back in May, the burglary a short time later. You can see it's still boarded up. The family that lived here, staying somewhere else. We have a map showing you the locations of the burglaries here in Fairfax County from Lorton to Reston and two in Fair Oaks. The fires and subsequent crimes dating back to last fall through the middle of this summer. In the fire on Shellbark Place in Reston last November, two people were killed. We reported that here on Fox 5 at the time. Fairfax County police say the burglars targeted this home twice. After the first one in which they tried to steal a gun safe police put up security cameras and caught the burglars coming back a second time stealing that gun safe loaded with firearms police also putting out an image of those weapons that were stolen four men have been charged in this case police say all four are from Maryland mainly Frederick County one of them now jailed in North Carolina another in Pennsylvania facing a variety of burglary grand larceny and destruction of property charges through our evidence through multiple videos through digital evidence and working with our regional partners and those being Loudoun County the state of Maryland the state of Pennsylvania Connecticut and the Federal Bureau of Investigation we were able to link all five of our burglaries and these four suspects the evidence will show they did their research they were looking for media releases about fires they were searching fire department's blogs they were searching any avenue they could to determine which house had been burned and which families were displaced at the time. None of the homes are currently occupied. Neighbors outraged to hear what's happened since the fires. Former Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova lives down the street from one of the burglarized houses. The people are lovely who lived here. They are good neighbors and it's a shame that they had to move out. The house was vacant. And for someone to take advantage of that tragedy is just unforgivable. Now, besides the firearms, the suspects are accused of stealing cash, jewelry and electronics from the homes they allegedly burglarized.