Prosecutor wants arsonist designated as dangerous
Provincial government gives permission for prosecutor to pursue designation
Ontario’s attorney general has given local prosecutors approval to pursue a dangerous offender designation for Patrick Warren, a serial arsonist who once surrendered his weapon of choice — a lighter — after turning himself in to Windsor police.
Warren, 39, was convicted last August of setting a fire at the former Pour House in downtown Windsor in February 2017.
It was just the latest in a series of arson convictions for the Windsor man. He has remained in custody ever since.
The local Crown attorney’s office had been awaiting the required approval by the provincial government to pursue a dangerous offender designation. Under provisions of the Criminal Code, such a designation is intended to protect Canadians from the most dangerous and violent offenders, and those so designated can be sentenced to an indeterminate sentence of imprisonment. Warren’s troubled history and criminal past will all be introduced as evidence by the prosecution in a Superior Court of Justice hearing that assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Brown estimates could take three to four weeks. A hearing date is expected to be set next week.
A court source told the Star that Warren has six convictions for intentionally set fires in the city. At a 2016 sentencing hearing, where Warren received an 18-month sentence for torching the Caron Avenue porch and garage of a former landlord’s property, his then-lawyer described the arson as “a cry for help” from a client who lost his mother at a young age, who had a history of schizophrenia and substance abuse, and who only had a Grade 4 education. The judge thanked Warren at the time for turning himself in to police several weeks after that arson. He had showed up at police headquarters and surrendered his lighter.
In another incident in 2001, Warren approached two police officers on patrol in the early hours of a Saturday and alerted them to two people he had spotted setting fire to a vacant home in the 500 block of Dougall Avenue. The evidence led back to Warren. “People can’t go around setting fires on impulse and that’s what you did — not only once, not only twice, but three times,” then-Ontario Court Justice Saul Nosanchuk admonished Warren during a 2002 sentencing hearing in which he was ordered to serve a threeyear federal prison term.
His defence lawyer that time described a client who had spent much of his childhood in the care of the Children’s Aid Society, had suffered horrific abuse and who “has basically had an unfair life.” Nobody was injured in the fire at the Pour House, with the building on Chatham Street just west of Ouellette Avenue vacant at the time.
Warren’s first jail sentence for arson was in 1998 when he set fire to a Tuscarora Street apartment building where he was living. The fire forced the evacuation of 25 occupants, but nobody was injured. Damages were pegged at $151,000. That time, he was sentenced to seven months in jail.
A year later, he set fire to the Hall Avenue rooming house where he was living, causing $50,000 in damages. He lit the couch in his apartment and then ran across the street to tell a neighbour. He was sentenced that time to 23 months in jail.