The cause of the fire which destroyed this garage in the 100-block of Kalamalka Lake Road Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014 is considered suspicious and the RCMP are investigating.
Image Credit: Contributed/Vernon Fire Rescue
October 27, 2014 - 12:39 PM
VERNON - A recent spike in suspicious fire activity has the community wondering if Vernon’s alleged serial arsonist is back.
The city was hit with over 20 suspected arsons during the summer, from burnt grandstands to torched boats, but there hadn’t been any new fires since September until recently. A construction site suspiciously caught fire Oct. 17 and a recycling bin on Oct. 20. Days later, on Oct. 25, police and the fire department attended a third suspicious fire, this time at the detached garage of a vacant house on Kalamalka Lake Road.
“At this point we can’t say there’s a pattern or anything linking it to what happened this summer,” RCMP spokesperson Gord Molendyk says.
While there was no one in the area at the time of the garage fire, Molendyk says police spoke with people in close proximity to the construction site and recycling bin fires. Police are calling them people of interest to the investigation, not suspects.
“This summer, many of the fires we had there was nobody in the area at all so there’s a difference in that,” Molendyk says.
In June, police arrested a pair of men in connection to an arson outside AJ’s Pets and Things, but were unable to catch the suspect, or suspects, responsible for the other fires this past summer.
To contact the reporter for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infonews.ca or call 250-309-5230. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
News from © iNFOnews, 2014