An Edmonton man with an apparent history of arson is facing multiple charges in relation to a series of suspicious fires at construction sites late last year.<\/p>\n
Police said they began investigating allegations of arson after multiple fires at infill construction sites in October and November of last year, a few of which spread to other homes. In total, eight homes were lost \u2014 five of which were under construction. The neighbourhoods hit were Belgravia, King Edward Park, Strathcona and Glenora.<\/p>\n
Police cannot say for certain if all the fires are related. No serious injuries resulted from the fires, which are estimated to have cost $8 million in damages.<\/p>\n
Edmonton police say they have been investigating the fires since last fall and laid charges on May 27.<\/p>\n
\u201cArson causes serious risk, particularly in residential areas, where fires can spread rapidly and place both responding personnel and the public in danger,\u201d said Insp. Jonathan Morrison. \u201cThe EPS has a specialized team of investigators who work closely with Edmonton Fire Rescue Services to determine the cause of suspicious fires and identify those responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through the investigation, police say they identified a suspect who was in custody since Nov. 13 for a parole violation. The suspect\u2019s parole was subsequently revoked after his arrest.<\/p>\n
Peter Terence Jones, 40, faces 27 criminal charges \u2014 including five counts of arson with disregard for human life, five counts of break and enter to commit arson, five counts of possession of property obtained by crime, and four counts of trafficking in property obtained by crime. He was in police custody at the time the charges were laid and remains behind bars.<\/p>\n
In 2015, an individual with the same name pleaded guilty<\/a> to 25 charges involving a series of large fires in Wetaskiwin and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.<\/p>\n No motive for the alleged arsons has been released. Police are asking anyone with information on these incidents to contact them at 780-423-4567 or submit information anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or online at www.p3tips.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n ebowling@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.<\/a><\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Edmonton man with an apparent history of arson is facing multiple charges in relation to a series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[8120,29772,1720,52,6585,830,29741],"class_list":["post-73474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-arson","tag-belgravia","tag-construction","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-fire-rescue-services","tag-edmonton-police","tag-suspicious-fires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}