Point Douglas residents establish patrols to combat arsons

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This article was published 27/10/2018 (2509 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Neighbourhood patrols have started in Point Douglas in an effort to curb arson and save lives.

Sel Burrows, chair of the Point Douglas Residents Committee, said five fires were set in the Point Douglas area in the early hours of Friday in addition to the suspected arson fire at 68 Prince Edward St., which claimed the lives of Maria Klaric and her 11-year-old granddaughter, who lived across the street with her mother, one of Klaric’s daughters.

“This particular family are just wonderful, salt-of-the-earth people. We just can’t understand why their house would be targeted now,” Burrows said.

Klaric was the victim of a home invasion a few months ago when a man on meth grabbed her and hauled her into the house, so she had stayed close to home since that happened, he said.

“This is a woman who contributed so much to our community and had two horrible things happen to her. It just makes you sick,” Burrows said.

“We’ve got to come up with some solutions. We’ve got some guys, volunteering as individuals, walking up and down lanes when they’re off work. We’re going to try to be vigilant. The community is just trying to think of alternatives.”

Police cars guarded the fire scene on Prince Edward Street Saturday, so it’s likely police are investigating the deaths as being criminal in nature, Burrows noted. Police arrested a person Friday in connection with the other fires but it isn’t known if there is a connection to the fatal blaze.

“Somebody was running around lighting fires in back lanes. Some of them could have been very serious. People got out and put them out, some with home fire extinguishers,” Burrows said.

“We’ve really worked hard at building community and people communicating; this is one of the wonderful things about Point Douglas. So a landlord on Lorne has really good video cameras and he picked up the guy setting the fire in the back lane by (his property), he got ahold of the police and they made an arrest very shortly after. So the arrest has been made for the smaller fires, but there’s no indication yet that it’s the same person who set the fire where the two people were killed.”

Another area resident gave police a video of a man running away when the fire engines were responding to the fatal house fire, he said.

“Basically, all our systems in Point Douglas to try to defend ourselves from this stuff is kicking in to catch somebody after the fact,” Burrows said, noting that actions of one person “doing something terrible” is difficult to prevent.

“On the whole, we’ve beaten the thing, no ratting, no squealing. We call it jail culture. We put a flyer out ever month or two to every house and it talks about being a community and calling,” he said, referring to the Point Douglas Powerline and community-watch programs.

“If you’re nervous about calling the police, call the Powerline.”

Residents working with police have helped curb drug problems in the area and greatly reduced break-ins, he said.

“We haven’t figured out how to deal with arson and for some reason, Point Douglas has been victim to more deaths by arson than any other area. What we’re asking people to do is just look out your window. If you see something, anything, call us. We’ll get the appropriate authorities to take care of it.”

A Winnipeg police spokesman said more information about the fires and the investigations would be released on Sunday.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca