Building owner facing 7 counts of manslaughter in connection with fatal Old Montreal fire
CBC
The owner of an Old Montreal building where seven people died in a 2023 fire is being charged with seven counts of manslaughter.
Émile Benamor, a 63-year-old lawyer and businessman who owns multiple properties in the Montreal area, was arrested this morning and is set to appear this afternoon at the Montreal courthouse.
Benamor is also facing eight counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm.
At a 10 a.m. news conference, Montreal police Chief-Insp. David Shane announced the charges and said the family members of the deceased had been informed of Benamor’s arrest.
“We are aware that all of them have been looking for answers for a long time,” he said. “We hope this development can help alleviate their suffering in a small way.”
The charges come nearly three years to the day since the building, a more than 100-year-old heritage property on Place D’Youville, went up in flames.
Many of the 22 people inside the building the night of the fire had been staying in illegal short-term rental units and, prior to the fire, worried renters considered the building a “fire trap.”
The charges laid on Wednesday allege that Benamor was negligent in managing the building. They do not allege he was directly responsible for starting the fire.
Shane said investigators were still trying to determine who set it. Montreal police said in August 2023 they had found traces of accelerant at the scene.
“Today we are talking about the negligence that accelerated the propagation of the fire and caused the deaths,” Shane said.
The fire, which began in the early hours of the morning on March 16, 2023, left seven people dead. Another nine were hospitalized.
"We will never forget the five women and two men who perished in the fire," Shane said.
The bodies of Charlie Lacroix, 18, Walid Belkahla, 18, An Wu, 31, Dania Zafar, 31, Saniya Khan, 32, Nathan Sears, 35, and Camille Maheux, 76, were recovered from the ruins of the building in the days after the blaze.
The charges against Benamor allege he committed manslaughter in connection with the deaths of all seven victims. The charges for criminal negligence allege that he caused bodily harm to eight other people injured on the night of the fire.
There was a bit more optimism among Prince Edward Island producers at this year’s Seafood Expo North America in Boston — but that depended on which industry they were representing.
A new contractor will take over operations of the Inuvik Warming Shelter on April 1 — closely following a switch at another Inuvik shelter — as Housing N.W.T. takes a step back from operating the two locations.
Northern Ontario politicians are urgently appealing to the federal government for help during one of the deadliest winters on record along 2,000 kilometres of highway between Nipigon, Sudbury and North Bay.
The ongoing U.S.-Israel war against Iran is causing diesel prices to spike across Canada, climbing nearly 30 per cent since the conflict began.
The federal government is bringing its case to justify use of the Emergencies Act to clear the convoy protests that gridlocked the capital city and border points to the country's highest court.
Statues on the grounds of the Ontario Legislature will be covered in wrapping to protect them from vandalism ahead of expected protests at Queen’s Park this spring.
In the aftermath of Ontario’s decision to no longer support provincially-funded supervised drug consumption sites, a potential path forward is emerging for the London Ont., based Carepoint Consumption and Treatment Service.
A group of children in the St. John’s neighbourhood of Shea Heights were playing outside last spring, when they made a shocking discovery.
Erin Sheppard's family was excitedly waiting Saturday afternoon to take a direct flight from Halifax Stanfield International Airport to Cancun, Mexico.
N.B. Power's ongoing rate hearing has been told that plans to spend $88.4 million over three years on outside experts to help fix chronic reliability problems at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station might not show results immediately but will pay off eventually.
As the province doubled down on its “tough on crime” measures and calls for federal bail reform this week, rates of violence across Ontario jails — both inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults — are rising, according to an analysis of data shared with CBC News by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).
Finance Minister Eric Girard is set to table Quebec’s provincial budget on Wednesday — less than a month before the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) chooses a successor to Premier François Legault.
Manitoba's finance minister says the NDP is funding education adequately, yet won't acknowledge some school divisions are raising taxes because they feel provincial funding hasn’t kept pace.