The case of a Carrollton man charged on five counts of arson in connection with five fires in Carrollton and Carroll County has been sent to Superior Court.

Steve Howard Acree Jr., 29, has been charged with setting fires to five abandoned homes: one at 304 Wooded Glen Road in Carrollton on May 11, at 789 Highway 27 in the Bowdon Junction community on May 19, a third at 707 Burns Road in Carrollton on June 9, another on Highway 100 in Bowdon on June 10 and the last at 436 Dixie St. in Carrollton, also on June 10.

Magistrate Judge James J. Hopkins ruled during Acree’s preliminary hearing Thursday that he will be bound over to Carroll County Superior Court.

Acree is being represented by defense attorney Jason Swindle.

Sgt. Shannon Cantrell, one of the investigators on the case, testified that witnesses were present at the scenes of most of the fires and reported seeing a man matching Acree’s description at or near each scene.

According to Cantrell, a Carroll EMC employee reported seeing a man leaving the scene of the Bowdon Junction fire and parking a small car across Highway 27 to get out and watch. A witness who was at Magnolia Lake Apartments during the Burns Road fire said he saw the man he saw driving away from the burning home there before. Cantrell said a third witness took down the license number of a car he saw parked near an abandoned home on Highway 100, a number that was traced back to the green Toyota Tercel registered to a woman with whom Acree was reportedly living at 105 West White St. in Carrollton. A red Dodge Neon that one witness described leaving the scene of a blaze was also registered to the woman.

All of the witnesses Cantrell mentioned gave a similar description of the person they saw leaving the fires: a white male approximately 30 years old, around 6 feet tall with medium build, a bald or shaved head, wearing a white “wife beater” tank top.

Only one of the witnesses asked to identify Acree in a photo line-up identified him positively.

Officers of the Carrollton Police Department were on the lookout for Acree’s car after his tag number was submitted by the witness. Cantrell said that Sgt. Cory Payne of the Carrollton police pulled Acree over on June 10 about a block from where the Dixie Street fire was then burning. According to Cantrell, Acree agreed to accompany the officers to the police station and allowed them to search his car. Among the items found in the car were a new Carroll County map, three lighters, several newspapers and paper towels, a one-gallon can of gas and receipt for a drink purchase from a Bowdon convenience store time-stamped around the time the Bowdon fire may have started, Cantrell said.

“He told me during the interview that he had never been to Bowdon that day,” Cantrell said.

Acree was arrested on June 10 and charged with two counts of first degree arson. Three additional charges have since been added.

Cantrell testified during the hearing that authorities have already established several similarities in the fires Acree has been charged with. All of the burned structures were abandoned homes with their utilities disconnected that were probably set ablaze with “available materials,” he said. Most of the fires were set near the rears of the homes, normally by an electrical outlet or gas line.

Cantrell said that a search warrant on Acree’s home revealed little. He described Acree’s one-bedroom home of about 400 square feet as virtually free of clothing and other personal possessions. Some materials, including recordable CDs, were confiscated by police but have not yet been examined.

Cantrell said that a number of brush fires had been reported in the late spring and early summer months, several of them coinciding with the dates of the fires Acree allegedly set.

“One of the brush fires reported that night was a bamboo patch that was in his back yard,” he said.

According to Cantrell, the woman with whom Acree lived told authorities that she and Acree were in Savannah on May 10 and visited the Atlanta Zoo and her mother in Atlanta on Mother’s Day -- the day of the first fire Acree has been charged with starting. He said that she later recanted her story, saying that Acree had been driving around helping clear debris left by the tornadoes that struck the county that morning. Cantrell added that investigators have also located several receipts from businesses in Carrollton dated May 11.

Another piece of evidence Cantrell cited came from Acree’s cell phone, where he had stored two pictures of house fires along with a number of family photos. He said that investigators from Douglas County have since positively identified one of the pictures as a house fire that took place on Factory Shoals Road in Douglasville. He added that Acree’s phone records revealed that the 911 call made to alter dispatchers of the Douglasville fire came from Acree’s cell phone and that he anticipates that Acree will face charges in Douglas County as well. The second fire photo found on Acree’s cell phone has yet to be identified.

Cantrell said after the hearing that authorities are still trying to determine whether or not Acree may have been involved in several other abandoned building fires that have been reported over the last several months.

“We’re kind of going back now and looking at our other fires, general descriptions, to see if there’s a pattern,” he said. “We do have several open arson cases on abandoned houses.”