House fire may be scene of three homicides: police
One person found outside Langley house ‘covered in blood’; two others dead inside
All three people found dead at a Langley home that was gutted by fire on the weekend may have been murdered, police say.
“We could potentially be looking at three homicides,” Sgt. Frank Jang of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said of the deaths on a residential street in Willowbrook.
A man whose “injuries were consistent with homicide” — and who a neighbour said was “covered in blood” — was one of three people killed in the 16700 block of Wakefield Drive. His body was found just outside the yellow two-storey house. The bodies of two other people were spotted among the charred remains, Jang said. The fire department on Monday was assessing the building for structural damage before police could enter the property to reach the bodies and investigate, Jang said.
Jang said police do not have a suspect, although they questioned an uninjured person at the scene before he was released.
He said police have not identified the two people found dead inside and police don’t know if they lived in the house. Police weren’t releasing the name of the man found dead outside or of the name of person they interviewed.
“He was in the place and he’s OK,” said Jang. “He didn’t require CPR. After we questioned him, he walked out on his own. There haven’t been any charges laid. There are areas of the investigation that we’re pursuing that we just can’t get into. There may be further updates coming.”
Yellow police tape surrounded the property, which included parts of the remaining half of the spacious house and a large charred palm tree, as well as the houses on either side, one of which had extensive fire damage on one side.
Two vehicles were towed from the property on Monday and several investigators, some wearing haz-mat suits, were on the scene.
Neighbours described a chaotic scene when the fire broke out around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Robert Ferguson, who lives across the street, said when he and his landlord heard there was a fire, they grabbed a ladder and ran to see if they could help.
He saw someone on the second floor and, outside the house, “there was a guy. He was covered in blood. I saw (first responders) drag him out the side.”
When police and firefighters arrived, they left. “It happened so quick,” he said, saying he could hear the glass popping.
“When we came out, there were flames everywhere,” said Glen Greenly, who lives with his wife, Tanya, and their adult son, Nikolas, in a house that backs on to the same area that the burned house does.
Greenly grabbed his garden hose to try to prevent the flames from reaching his neighbour’s yard, but the water barely reached.
When Jean Alexander, who lives three doors down, saw the smoke, “we grabbed our shoes and raced outside.” She and other neighbours were asked to leave their houses for a couple of hours, until firefighters were certain their houses weren’t in danger of catching fire.
Her granddaughter, who is a nurse in an emergency room, helped at the scene. “She’s pretty traumatized by the whole thing.”
The house is owned by Kelly and John Robinson, but Alexander said they lived in Oliver and the people in the house were renters who had lived there for four years.
No one in the neighbourhood knew the tenants’ names, although many exchanged hellos and pleasantries with them.