No charges will be laid for the Victoria Towers fire because there was little likelihood of conviction, according to the B.C. Crown.
On Thursday, police in Prince George announced that they had investigated the matter to its end, suggested charges against a person or persons (publicly unnamed), but Crown turned the idea down.
The reaction was swift from the former residents of the 12-storey apartment building destroyed on Nov. 3 by the early morning fire.
"I want to know why. We all believed it was suspicious to begin with," said Tony Wedzinga, one of the most vocal of the former tenants and a leader among those contemplating a civil suit to recover lost rent, deposits, and personal effects.
"Our lives were all put at risk, we have all lost our homes and more, and we didn't even know someone was suspected.
"I'm tired of bureaucrats not standing up for victims and using their common sense.
"A lot of us are still traumatized by that, and I never received anything for the pain and suffering I went through.
"We don't even know who we can sue over this, but we have all been made victims. We have the right to know who did this to us, and hold them accountable."
The right to know who only extends to those who get formally charged.
The reason no one in this case is being formally charged, said provincial Crown spokesperson Neil MacKenzie, is no one can be proved guilty of a crime.
"It was started first in some tissue paper, and that in turn started a mattress on fire," said MacKenzie.
"The individuals in the apartment tried putting the fire out, including the use of an extinguisher, and thought they had been successful.
"At some point after the parties left the room, the mattress re-ignited and the fire spread from that point."
It didn't rise to the level of recklessness needed to support a criminal charge, especially given the efforts to put out the original fire."
According to Prince George RCMP, it is not rare or unexpected that Crown doesn't choose to pursue charges based on the suggestions of police.
"We gather evidence and tell Crown where the evidence points, we do not decide on anyone's guilt or innocence," said RCMP spokesman Cpl. Craig Douglass.
"We are cognizant that we are not the lawyers and they know best how to do their job, and they opted in this case not to pursue charges. We are not upset at Crown, we know they have a complex set of judgment calls to make."
As for Wedzinga's allegation that the victims were not told of the existence of a police investigation or that particular suspects were known, a situation he calls a "a bald-faced lie to the victims," Douglass countered "It wasn't a secret. The fire department announced almost right away that the matter had been turned over to the RCMP and I personally attended some of the residents' meetings to answer any questions but no one ever asked me anything."
Wedzinga, who has been living with his girlfriend in a BC Housing rental unit since the fire, said he and other former tenants were still pursuing repayment for their losses. Some had been repaid a portion of the amount owing, one he knew of had been paid the full amount owing, but some like himself had received nothing.
