Nanaimo, B.C., man charged with arson after 2022 fire at Victoria home of Ukrainian priest

Police say a man has been arrested and charged with arson after a fire at a home in Victoria nearly one year ago. 

Police and firefighters responded to a fire in the 1100 block of Caledonia Avenue on April 20, 2022. 

Police say they arrested a Nanaimo, B.C., man Wednesday and he is being charged with one count of arson with disregard for human life. He is being held in custody to appear in court.  

A publication ban has been placed on the man's name.

He was known to the family, police said, but the incident was "not motivated by hatred towards an identifiable group." 

The building was home to Father Yuriy Vyshnevskyy, the parish priest at the Ukrainian Catholic Church of St. Nicholas, located next door, and his family.

Three girls had to be lowered by their mother out of the second floor window to their father and two bystanders waiting below, Dan Atkinson, acting chief of the Victoria Fire Department said at the time. The mother then had to be rescued by firefighters with the help of a ladder.

Vyshnevskyy said last spring that his wife woke up around 1 a.m. PT after hearing noises. She assumed it was one of her children walking around the house, then realized the sounds were coming from the front porch.

"The next thing she heard was the sound of ... emptying the bottle and the smell of gasoline," he said. "Someone was pouring [it] inside the house through the mail slot."

"She yelled, she called me and said, 'Yuriy, get up, someone's pouring this into the house' ... Up until that point, there was no fire."

But almost immediately after he was alerted to the gasoline, Vyshnevskyy said, someone struck a fire which spread "really quickly."

By the time he got downstairs, the front room was already ablaze. As smoke filled the house, he said he had to abandon his plans to put out the fire himself, and then escaped through the back door.

Outside, he saw his wife and children through the upstairs window, gasping for air.

His neighbour then helped encourage the stranded children to jump — their only safe way out of the house.

"They trusted us and and they were brave," Vyshnevskyy said.

Following the fire, Atkinson praised the parents for their quick thinking.

"It's really an incredible story and a testament to both the parents of the children to ensure their safety by closing doors behind them to help prevent rapid fire spread into the areas where they were," he said.

"It certainly could have been much worse."