A homeowner who caught a stranger in the night setting fire to his American flag says the damage could have been way worse

A Richmond, Va., homeowner says that he was lucky the flag burning that took place on his front porch after 2 a.m. on Wednesday didn’t spread 15 feet up to his room and then to several other connected homes.

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James Tanner spoke with WWBT about waking up Wednesday morning to find his American flag burned, and then watching it all unfold on the security camera footage he had recorded.

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The “Nest Cam” catches the flag burner in the act and provides some identifying factors, including a striped shirt, shorts and a backpack and flowers.

Tanner said that he noticed his flag was missing, looked at the video evidence, saw the whole crime and thought about how lucky he was that the fire didn’t spread to his house.

The homeowner mentioned that the several other house were connected to his, so if it spread to his house, it would spread to theirs.

“You can see here we have three porches all in a row that are all attached. If one goes up, they are all going to go up,” he said. “I sleep 15 feet from here, right where the flames were. If it were to go up, I’d have a difficult time getting out of the house.”

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The man responsible fled the scene just as the fire was started and has not yet been apprehended.