Neighborhood torched
The week's news at a glance.
Indian Head, Md.
Forty unoccupied homes in a posh Maryland development being built near a nature preserve were set on fire this week, in what investigators suspect was an act of ecoterrorism. Environmentalists filed a lawsuit last year trying to block construction of the 300-home subdivision in Indian Head, about 25 miles south of Washington, D.C. The Sierra Club called the project “quintessential sprawl,” and complained that it would damage one of the nation’s last undisturbed magnolia bogs. Investigators confirmed that fires in at least four houses were set by arsonists. Patricia Stamper, who lives nearby and joined the effort to block the project, said, “Our group certainly had nothing to do with it.”
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