FIRE WAS ARSON, POLICE SAY
Infant’s death now a homicide
Police say a house fire that killed a five-month-old baby boy Tuesday morning in southwest Edmonton was deliberately set and are calling the child’s death a homicide.
The blaze gutted the Ambleside home at 1040 Armitage Cres. after erupting at 4 a.m. Tuesday. Police labelled the fire an arson 11 hours later as homicide detectives and arson unit investigators continued to comb through the charred scene.
Eight people were in the twostorey home when the arson fire started, police said in a news release. The baby boy and a 29-yearold woman, identified by family as the child’s mother, were taken to hospital with critical, life-threatening injuries. The baby died in hospital.
Six other people, including two children, escaped but were treated by emergency responders and taken to hospital.
They include a 58-year-old man, a 40-year-old man, a 24-year-old man, a 35-year-old woman, a seven-year-old child and a five-yearold child. Police say people in the house are not all related.
Homicide detectives arrived at the burnt-out home at about 2 p.m. A woman who identified herself only as a family member was at the house cradling a bouquet of flowers.
She was unable to place the flowers because the area was still taped off by police and fire crews.
Kyle Whitford, 24, who rents a room from the family, was anxiously looking for answers at the scene Tuesday evening.
He woke up Tuesday morning to the sound of fire alarms. He went upstairs and saw the fire, and rushed to the basement to grab the children and later a dog and a cat that lived in the home. The front door and back door were both impassable.
“We tried going out the front door and we couldn’t, so we went down through to the basement window,” he said. “We broke the window and went through the back, over the fence to the next house over.”
He was one of two renters in the family home. Four people lived upstairs and four downstairs.
Whitford had no idea why anyone would target the home.
He lived there for two-and-ahalf years and was friendly with Angie Tang, who he believes is 29 years old and is listed as the homeowner, and her husband Cordell Brown. Both are trained nurses, although Brown was not currently employed. The night before, the three had gone swimming together at a nearby recreation centre.
He said the deceased baby’s name is Hunter, but did not know his last name.
“When I came out, there was a full-blown fire,” said Muhammed Khan, who lives three houses away, across the street from the scene.
“It’s just emotional, sad, very chaotic. All we were doing was praying. It’s not a joke, losing your house and family.”
Khan and another neighbour, Ling Ran, said the family in the home also had rental tenants.
Charleston Green, who has lived in the quiet neighbourhood since 2011, called the devastating fire “shocking.”
This is Edmonton’s 34th homicide of the year.