New Brunswick RCMP say they unintentionally caused a house fire during a standoff last year when they used a tear-gas canister that ignited after landing inside a home near Fredericton.
An RCMP spokesperson only confirmed the house fire in Kingsclear First Nation after a media request this week, as it was not included in a news release at the time.
A police statement from 2025 said the Upper Kingsclear Fire Department and public safety officials attended the scene, about 25 kilometres west of Fredericton.
Patrick Polchies, a Kingsclear First Nation councillor, said the April 2025 fire “demolished” the house on Tomahawk Avenue.
“The fire totalled the place, it was nothing but a pile of rubble,” Polchies told The Canadian Press in an interview Thursday. He added a new structure was since built on the property.
Police said they used the tear gas to draw out a man who had barricaded himself inside the residence and was firing a weapon towards responding officers.
The RCMP said last year the 34-year-old man was arrested and charged with 16 counts of attempted murder and firing at police.
The New Brunswick-based Telegraph-Journal newspaper was the first to report on the RCMP’s new comments about what caused the house fire.
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Thor Eells, a retired Colorado Springs, Colo., police commander who also trained tactical officers from Canada, said there is always a risk of fire when using chemical agents but it doesn’t happen often.
Eells, whose police career spanned nearly 30 years, said in one scenario a fire started when tear gas interacted with Scotchgard furniture spray on a couch and spread to the drapes.
However, fire crews can’t get to work before other threats are removed, he said.
“You can’t put firefighters or fire service in a dangerous situation where they could be shot,” said Eells, who is now the executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association.
“You have to have mitigate the potential threat of the suspect before you can address the fire hazard.”
Eells said in a scenario, like the standoff in Kingsclear, police are trained to prioritize public safety first and likely decided to use the gas after other options were exhausted.
Sometimes, he added, police will in rare circumstances intentionally start a fire to flush out a suspect or suspects, in order to protect public safety.
“If the scenario is so bad and they believe that the danger of the suspect to others is so great that they can justify the use of deadly force, they will intentionally try and use a different version of tear gas to start a fire in hopes that the fire then displaces the suspect,” Eells said.
There have only been a few instances where a fire was reported under similar circumstances during an arrest by Canadian police.
Most recently, police in Victoria, B.C., say tactical officers arrested a person who had barricaded themselves in an apartment on Christmas evening 2019.
Police say they saw smoke coming from the suite and called the fire department. The firefighters extinguished the blaze while tactical officers moved in, and the suspect was taken to hospital in critical condition.
In New Brunswick, police noted they had responded to a report about an alleged assault at the house in Kingsclear in April 2025.
Shortly after, the man began firing “dozens of gunshots” at police through the windows of the residence, police said.
At one point, an RCMP emergency response officer was hit by a bullet in the head but avoided serious injuries thanks to their ballistic helmet.
Crisis negotiators were unable to get the man to surrender, according to a police record of events.
Police said they threw a common form of tear gas known as CS — an acronym for Ben Corson and Roger Stoughton, the two U.S. chemists who first synthesized the chemical compound in 1928.
The tear gas forced the 34-year-old and another individual, a 50-year-old woman, to exit the building. Both were arrested at the time but the woman was later released, police said.
Along with the attempted murders, the man was also charged with aggravated assault and uttering threats.
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