Contractor held in chemical attack: FBI agents arrested the owner of Burns Power Washing on Friday and accused him of launching a chemical attack against a couple who say they were his customers. On Aug. 2, 2009, someone sealed shut the doors of Myles and Karen Levine's home and ignited chlorine tablets mixed with a chemical in their front and back yards. The result was a chlorine gas cloud the size of a football field that caused the evacuation of homes in the Levines' gated northwest-side neighborhood.
Federal prosecutors alleged Friday that Todd Russell Fries, also known as Todd Burns, was the perpetrator. Fries appears in ads for his business that end with the slogan "Burns Power Washing … right on the spot!" Agents arrested Fries on Friday morning at his home in the 5500 block of West El Camino del Cerro. A neighbor, Sparky Waters, said dozens of law-enforcement vehicles lined the road and the Pima County sheriff's bomb squad came, too. A federal indictment, unsealed earlier Friday, charges Fries with two counts of using a chemical weapon at the Levines' then-home in the 2800 block of West Magee road.
After the attack in 2009, Myles Levine said the only people he knew of that had any dispute with them was a contractor. On Friday, Levine would not say whether Fries was that contractor, but he did acknowledge that he had been a customer of Burns Power Washing. "It feels really good that there's been an arrest made. We've been living pretty much under wraps," Levine said. The Levines' previous home also was attacked on Oct. 31, 2008, when they were living in Marana. In that attack, someone wrote anti-Semitic graffiti on their home and dead animals were left outside. In the 2009 incident, too, dead animals were left outside the Levines' home. At the time, the Levines said they thought the two attacks were connected, and they told Marana police they suspected the contractor in the first incident. Authorities have not accused Fries of carrying out the 2008 attack.
Fries has been charged with misdemeanor crimes four times in Tucson municipal court, but all were dismissed. Three incidents in July and August 2008 led to two charges of shoplifting and one of assault, but all three were dismissed on March 16, 2009, said city prosecutor Baird Green. In 1996, Fries was charged with disorderly conduct, but that case, too, was dismissed.
On Burns Power Washing's website, Fries says he started the business on Oct. 6, 1999. The company's Facebook page shows photos of several large jobs the company has carried out recently, including window cleaning at the Richard Jefferson Gymnasium on the UA campus. Waters said Fries was generally a normal neighbor who would park large trucks with his business's name in his driveway. The roll-down shades at Fries' house were always down, except after the FBI arrived Friday, Waters said.
The most unusual thing Waters saw, he said, was that Fries would sometimes use a BB gun to shoot woodpeckers that pecked on his home. However, he said, FBI agents did come by several months ago and ask whether Waters' family ever smelled chemicals coming from next door. The Levines have felt terrorized for the last couple of years, Myles Levine said. Without knowing for sure who was targeting them, they moved to a more secure home and largely stopped leaving the house, said Levine, 63. "I had basically no contact other than some phone calls," Levine said. "We didn't know what was going on," he said. "We couldn't take the chance of it happening again. We were scared."
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