A man who is believed to have burgled homes, cars and possiblyeven a church is behind bars after what could possibly be a five-to seven-county burglary spree, officials said Friday.

Lawrence County Undersheriff Willie Wallace said the suspect,whose name is not yet being released, has been tied to burglariesin at least five counties. Officials said they believe the spreebegan sometime around August or September.

“The subject has been very cooperative with authorities inseveral counties,” Wallace said. “He seems to want to get thisbehind him.”

Wallace said the suspect was caught in an attempted homeinvasion in Lawrence County last week. He has been working withauthorities in Lawrence, Walthall, Amite, Lincoln, and Simpsoncounties so far, and he is still cooperating.

Meanwhile, Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing said the suspectcan be tied to at least six incidents and possibly seven in LincolnCounty.

“It’s a mixture of two or three houses and about four cars,” hesaid. “In the case of the vehicles, he either broke the window orit was unlocked, and he took items out of them.”

Rushing said Lincoln County authorities have recovered propertyfrom two of the cars, and that in the case of the house burglaries,mostly money was taken. It appears the suspect began hittinglocations in Lincoln County sometime in October.

“When he got caught, all these cases kind of came together,”Rushing said. “And we’re still looking at other things to see ifthere’s anything else he’s responsible for.”

The arrest of the man helps sew up a good number of the openburglary cases on the southeast corner of the county, Rushing said.He added that putting the pieces together was a result of goodcommunication among area law enforcement agencies.

“Our investigators try to talk every day or at least every week,and we try to keep each other informed on what we’ve got,” he said.”This was great work on communication between the counties.”

And, Rushing said, his department is continuing to work on thecases that remain open and cannot be attributed to the suspect.

“We may not always have immediate results, but we don’t letthese cases drop,” he said. “It may take a little time clearingthem, but we’re constantly working on them.”