A Nanaimo, B.C., man has been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for setting fire to the family home of a Victoria Ukrainian priest three years ago.
Walter ‘Theo’ Machinski pleaded guilty to one count of arson with disregard for human life for setting the fire at the St. Nicholas Ukrainian Church early on the morning of April 20, 2022.
Victoria police say the family of five who lived there “narrowly escaped the blaze, with some forced to jump from second-storey windows while others were rescued by firefighters.”
The home remains uninhabitable from water and fire damage.
At the time, Father Yuriy Vyshnevskyy, a priest at the church, told Global News he believed someone had poured gasoline through the mail slot to start the fire.
The fire happened amid heightened tensions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, Victoria police now say they don’t believe the blaze was linked to anyone’s ethnic heritage.
“Investigators determined that this was a targeted offence, in which the accused was known to the family, but it was not motivated by hatred towards an identifiable group,” police said in a media release on Wednesday.