An Edmonton man is facing new charges in connection to an apartment fire, after the body of a missing 70-year-old man was found in the building’s wreckage months after the blaze.
Edmonton Police Service announced Friday afternoon that Jason Zabos, 44, was arrested in relation to a homicide stemming from a fire at an apartment building in the area of 107th Street and 79th Avenue that happened in late January.
EPS said Friday that the remains of Ricardo Olivares were located at the site of the fire on April 22, after his family reported him missing.
Zabos is already facing charges related to the fire, including arson disregard for human life, obstructing a peace officer and breaching a court order. Police said Friday that a manslaughter charge and a second charge of arson disregard for human life are pending.
Police clarified Friday that the court order in January was directing Zabos to evict the residence.
EPS say that officers were dispatched to the building around 5 pm on Jan 25, to help another agency carry out a court order against Zabos who barricaded himself inside one of the units, police said.
Negotiations continued until shortly before 1 am, when a fire started inside Zabo’s suite, police said.
The building was evacuated and Zabos was taken into custody.
Several evacuees were taken to the hospital, and have since recovered from their physical injuries, according to a news release from EPS on Friday.
EPS received a missing person report about Olivares from his family on April 10.
The family reported that they had not heard from the senior since Jan. 5 and reported him missing after learning of the fire that burned down the apartment building where Olivares lived.
EPS spokesperson Cheryl Voordenhout said in a statement to CBC that Edmonton Fire Rescues Services had searched the site in January.
“A search was conducted by EFRS at the time of the fire, and no injured or deceased individuals were found. At that time, investigators believed everyone was accounted for.”
The EPS Missing Persons Unit, with the assistance of its canine unit and Edmonton Fire Rescue Services conducted a further search of the building wreckage and discovered Olivares’ remains on April 22.
Edmonton’s medical examiner completed an autopsy on April 24 which found Olivares had died from smoke inhalation with the manner of death being a homicide.
On Friday, Zabos was arrested during a scheduled court appearance.
The Director of Law Enforcement determined that the incident remains outside the scope of an Alberta Serious Incident Response Team review.
‘Extremely irregular’
Shawn McKerry, dean of the emergency training center at Lakeland College, told CBC a situation where a body is found months after a fire is “extremely irregular.”
“I would say you’d probably be hard-pressed to find a situation like this happening, often at all.”
McKerry, who has worked in fire services for over two decades, said the protocol for a fire search and rescue entails a primary and secondary search.
The primary search is intense and rapid and requires first responders to prioritize saving anyone who is in immediate danger.
A secondary search occurs once the situation has stabilized and allows for a more sweep of the area where the fire took place.
The gap of time between those two searches can vary depending on how well staffed first responders are and whether an incident commander is able to make the call that the area is safe enough to search.
McKerry said a key factor appears to be a lack of information.
“Without that call from the family, today, that the body would still be missing, because no one would know it was missing.”
