Old Montreal fatal fire: What exactly happened?
Posted October 6, 2024 4:20 pm.
Last Updated October 6, 2024 6:22 pm.
The Oct. 4 Old Montreal fire, where a mother and her seven-year-old daughter – both from France – died, has left so many questions.
The police investigation is underway, a coroner’s inquest requested, but so much is left to understand.
CityNews spoke to Minh-Tri Truong, a retired commander of specialized investigations for the Montreal police (SPVM), about the case and his thoughts.
“When there is a fire, firefighters first on the scene have a job to do – which is the fire – but at the same time, they have to also see if there is an element that suggests the fire could be criminal. Once that’s confirmed, it’s the SPVM that takes over the investigation,” said Truong.
Léonor Geraudie, 43, and her daughter Vérane Reynaud-Geraudie were inside the three-storey, 100-year-old building on Notre-Dame Street east Friday when a fire broke out on the first floor at around 2:30 a.m., and quickly spread.
A restaurant is located on the main floor and a hostel is upstairs.
Two other people were injured in the blaze, one critically.
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At a news conference Saturday afternoon, Montreal police would not share any details about the potential cause of the fire – but continued to call it ‘suspicious’ in nature.
Troung says police will be meeting with people who were there, checking security cameras and footage taken by witnesses.
But on Saturday, authorities would not provide any details about a possible suspect, even when questioned about security camera footage obtained by Radio-Canada – which allegedly shows a masked person breaking into the building minutes before the fire broke out.
Reports suggest that this could all allegedly be tied to organized crime.
“It’s the ‘Torch’ as we call it in our police jargon, that would be the person who may have lit the fire – who could have possibly gotten a contract to do so,” said Troung in French.
Truong describes it as if in a possible arsonist’s head, they are getting an amount of money to do this act and despite the fact that there could be apartments on the upper floors, they didn’t think that it could kill people. “That’s what criminals are like,” he explained. “They don’t necessarily think about other people’s lives when they commit their acts.”
He also said that sometimes if a business doesn’t pay a ‘Pizzo’ — what’s referred to as protection money paid to the Mafia — sometimes events like this follow.
Truong is not aware of the inner workings of this case, as he’s retired, and is no longer with Montreal police.
He doesn’t know specifically if this is what happened in this fire, but he explained what hypothetically could lead to events like this one — using his years of expertise.
