The FBI is looking for information on two fires at women's clinics this week that appear to have been intentionally set.
FBI Special Agent Steve Emmett wouldn’t call the man in these pictures a suspect. But he did say agents want to question the man, who was photographed by bank surveillance cameras near Wednesday’s fire at a clinic in Marietta.
“He was in the right place at the right time to be a potential witness,” Emmett said.
Police say the man was near the fire when it started around 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Alpha Group on Powers Ferry Road in Marietta.
The building was evacuated as firefighters put out the blaze and cleared away the smoke. Damage in that fire was reported to be “extensive.”
Several employees at the Cobb County clinic say they saw three men running from the third floor shortly after the fire. The third floor is where the medical records are kept and where there is a public restroom.
The man caught on security tape is described as a black man between 5-foot-10 and 6-foot-1. He is wearing a blue polo shirt with an emblem on the left chest and khaki pants. The man was also seen by witnesses talking on a smart phone. The man was seen driving away in a gray Mercury Marquis with tinted windows and large chrome wheels.
Authorities have not said the fires are connected and they also have not determined a motive. But the fires are similar.
The first fire happened early Sunday morning at the Atlanta Gynecology and Obstetrics Gwinnett office on Pleasant Hill Road in Lilburn, damaging the offices of a gynecological practice.
"Fire investigators have determined the fire to be suspicious in nature but have not yet called it an act of arson," Gwinnett County Fire Captain Tommy Rutledge told News/Talk WSB.
That is the same office where burglars stole a desktop computer containing medical records on Jan. 26.
The Alpha Clinic in Cobb County has also been the site of several protests against abortion. Clinic doctors and workers at these clinics are worried that pro-lifers are behind the fires.
"You hate to point fingers, but when you start to see a pattern I think it's a little more worrisome," Dr. Richard Zane, whose Atlanta Women's Health Group office in Sandy Springs was burglarized March 4, told the AJC.
Dr. Zane and others think someone is going after them for speaking up against a new law that reduces the time period for when an elective abortion can occur from about 26 weeks to 20 weeks.
The FBI asks anyone with information to call 404-679-9000.