Police looking for 5 teens after vacant downtown apartment building destroyed

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This article was published 06/04/2015 (3896 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Winnipeg police are investigating the likelihood a massive blaze Monday at a vacant building on Hargave Street was deliberately set.

The four-storey building at 44 Hargrave, which stood for 105 years, went up in flames about 6:45 p.m.

There were no injuries.

Today, police gave a damage estimate of $1,000,000.

Witnesses told police several youth were seen fleeing the area. The suspects are described as three girls and two boys, all about 14 to 15 years old.

Members of the Winnipeg Police Service arson unit continue to investigate. Anyone with further information that may assist investigators is asked to call 204-986-6813 or Crime Stoppers at 204-786-TIPS (8477).

Firefighters were able to save the apartment building at 42 Hargrave to the immediate south, although it was damaged Monday night. The residents there were quickly evacuated just in case.

Area residents said there had been squatters until recently when construction crews began working inside daily. One Hargrave resident said he’d reported to police that he’d seen about seven young teenagers hanging around the building before the fire broke out.

Deputy Fire Chief Joe Seewald said Monday night there was no sign of anyone inside the burning building.

One man, whose basement window was almost touching distance to the burning building, said his windows had already blown in when police came to pound on his door.

“The heat was so intense that my windows blew in. My curtains caught the glass,” said the man, who declined to give his name. “All my stuff is gone.”

A block to the west, people living in apartments on Carlton Street watched in fear and fascination as firefighters kept the conflagration from getting away. So many hoses soaked 44 Hargrave that it appeared to be raining water and ashes 200 metres away.

Neighbours couldn’t agree how long the building had been vacant, but there was a consensus it had been years.

“There’s been workers in there daily dismantling the building,” said one neighbour, who previously had seen squatters there.

One blogger — demonhotelofhargrave.blogspot.ca — has claimed for years the building was haunted, and reports it opened in 1910 as Kenilworth Court.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

 

— with files from Mary Agnes Welch