Salmon Arm RCMP officers pulled a man to safety after he set fire to a double-wide modular home completely destroying it in the early morning hours of Monday, Dec. 21.
Police were called out at around 10 p.m. Sunday evening to an incident involving a barricaded man inside a home on Eagle Bay Road. The man was armed with knives and was making threats.
An adult man and woman were safely removed from the house, but the suspect refused to leave the residence. Contrary to police instructions, he remained inside, smashing things and making threats to harm himself and police.
A neighbouring home was evacuated in order to safely secure the area and Eagle Bay Road was blocked to traffic during the standoff.
Throughout the course of the incident, RCMP officers spoke with the man who repeatedly threatened harm. During the course of the incident, the man smashed out several windows of the residence and then set the home on fire and refused to leave the residence.
On three occasions, RCMP officers extinguished small fires with extinguishers and area volunteer fire departments were called out to assist.
“Officers made continuous attempts to negotiate with the man to leave the residence peacefully each time that the man briefly exited the home threatening RCMP officers with knives,” said Cpl. Dan Moscaluk in a press release.
“Eventually the man did set a large fire which quickly engulfed the residence. RCMP officers had to make several attempts to pull the uncooperative man from the blaze and succeeded when the man tried to crawl out of a very small window.”
No officers were injured in the incident.
The man, who was not physically injured, was arrested and was taken to hospital for a medical assessment.
The final fire was so significant that by the time firefighters could gain access, the home was completely destroyed.
