Family that fled firebombing describes flames 'spilling' across floor

Lee Rasley was snuggling her puppy Hercules on the living room sofa on Monday night inside their main-floor flat on Chebucto Road in Halifax. She considered crashing there, leaving her husband and six-year-old son to sleep in the master room. 

Luckily for her, she left the sofa and went to bed. 

At 11:30 p.m., police say someone deliberately fired an incendiary device through the front picture window, then took off in a white sedan down Quinn Street.

Awoken by the sound of broken glass and banging, Rasley's husband went into the living room to find the sofa on fire.

Jonathan Rasley says he was worried when he didn't hear his children crying, and started filling containers with water, soaking blankets and throwing it all at the fire. On the floor, he spotted a beer bottle.

"I'm not sure if I kicked it or if it was just rolling around," he says. "But it was on fire and spilling fire all over my floor."

He grabbed the bottle and threw it outside.

'We lost everything'

While Jonathan Rasley battled the flames, his wife gathered up their son, 12-year-old daughter and ran out of the house. They implemented the family's fire drill, which they say has been practised often.

"It went pretty much as we practised," says Lee Rasley. "Minus my husband trying to be the big hero."

Jonathan Rasley says he stayed inside as long as he could trying to put out the flames.

"We lost everything," he says. 

Kids return to school

The family is now staying at a Halifax hotel and is being helped by the Canadian Red Cross.

Jonathan Rasley his children are coping with what happened "extremely well" and returned to school on Wednesday. 

"I'm proud of them for the way they're handling it," says Jonathan Rasley. "For a 12- and seven-year-old to understand that and say, 'It's only stuff Daddy,' shows a level of responsibility that you don't expect them to have at that age."

He says the fire was intentional and "someone wanted this place to go up," but he doesn't know who did it or why. There's a tenant who lives above the family with whom they rarely speak. 

"It's somebody very disturbed," Lee Rasley says of the man who did the firebombing. 

Jonathan Rasley says he believes the suspect, who police are still looking for, "meant to do harm to a specific individual and made a grave error in judgment."

"I strongly hope they consider their actions and think about it and pray I never find them," he says.