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Police have announced a reward for information about a car arsonist at night

The Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate yesterday announced a reward for information about an attacker who sets fire to cars parked on the streets at night . Its size was not officially announced. Unofficially, sources in the Central Internal Affairs Directorate reported that the amount of the bonus could be 1 million rubles.

Formally, the reward was assigned for information about a criminal who burned 11 cars in the Severnoye Butovo district in southwest Moscow on the night of May 30. However, since then, arson in the capital, although not on such a large scale - three or four cars, began to occur every night. So, on Monday night, three cars were burned in the Yasenevo area. Moreover, the geography of these incidents has expanded significantly - the last time cars were on fire not only in the southwest, but also in the north and east of the city. True, until the conclusion of the examination, the police are not sure that the latest cases were arson, and did not rule out that the cars could have been destroyed due to a short circuit in the electrical wiring, for example.

The Central Internal Affairs Directorate noted that, in principle, such cases are not that uncommon in Moscow. It’s just that people usually don’t pay attention to them, and they don’t cause such a resonance. Now, due to the events in Northern Butovo and Yasenevo, where it has already been established that these were arson, every car fire is attributed to the machinations of the arsonist.

On Tuesday night, the first car - a BMW - burst into flames at about one in the morning on Profsoyuznaya Street near house 5/9. At about 2.00 on 1st Vladimirskaya Street an Audi car caught fire, and at about 4.00 a Gazelle parked on Flotskaya Street near house No. 27 caught fire. The capital's police department, however, stated that these fire incidents, according to preliminary data, are not related to each other.

Meanwhile, an operational headquarters has been created in the South-Western District to investigate fire incidents in this district. Employees of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department also got involved in the case. According to investigators, the previous arsons in Yasenev and on Profsoyuznaya Street are related and, it is possible, were committed by an elusive pyromaniac from Northern Butovo. To protect their cars, the Central Internal Affairs Directorate yesterday invited motorists to organize night watches in their yards.

Maxim SHABROV