Several suspicious fires and their subsequent investigations resulted in arson charges for two people this week.

Mary Candice Walker, 30, of N.C. Highway 33 East, and Albert Jeffrey Manning, 47, of Ayden, were charged by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office — Walker, for allegedly resetting a house fire on the Main Street Extension in Edward; and Manning, for two separate blazes at abandoned homes on N.C. Highway 102, Chocowinity, near the Pitt County line.

All three structures were considered total losses, according to Maj. Kenneth Watson, spokesman for the sheriff’s office, and in all three cases, the sheriff’s office was called in when volunteer fire department personnel responding to the scenes recognized the suspicious nature of the fires.

According to a sheriff’s office press release, Aurora and Blounts Creek volunteer fire departments were called to the Edward scene twice in one night, first at 7:30 p.m. and again at 9 p.m., only 10 minutes after the scene was secured, on March 23, 2012. “It was (originally) a small fire contained to one room, but we cleaned it up, cleared it out and we hadn’t even gotten back to the station — we were pulling into the driveway — when they called us back,” said Blounts Creek Fire Chief David Williams. “When we got there, it was pretty much rolling. We knew when we left the fire was out and they don’t normally start back up that fast.”

Walker lived in the rental home with her husband and children and has been charged with the second fire only, as investigators have been unable to prove she set the first fire, Watson explained.

The lack of any electricity and no sign of an identifiable source of the fire’s origin at the two burned properties in Chocowinity tipped off Chocowinity Volunteer Fire Department to the possibility of arson. The first fire took place around 9:45 p.m. on Dec. 27, 2012; the second, at the house next door to the first, on March 10 at 4 a.m.

When Manning was served the Beaufort County charges, he was being held in the Pitt County Detention Center on similar charges.

“He is suspected of multiple arsons in Pitt County,” Watson said, adding that the motive for the Chocowinity fires appears to be an attempt to salvage recyclable metals from the abandoned residences, both of which were approximately 100 years old.

While serial arsonists aren’t that common in the area, Watson said they do crop up every few years. The last occurrence was in 2011, when 12 fires were deliberately set around northeastern Beaufort County. Bath resident, Todd Austin Jarvis, was convicted of setting seven of the fires and is now serving a prison term, Watson said.