EDMONTON – A 27-year-old Edmonton man pleaded guilty Monday to setting a fire in April 2007 which caused $3 million damage to the library at Victoria School of Performing and Visual Arts.
A Court of Queen’s Bench judge ordered that a pre-sentence report and a psychiatric assessment be done before Clayton Mattice is sentenced.
Charges of shoplifting, mischief and possession of stolen property under $5,000 were stayed after Mattice pleaded guilty to one count of arson.
Court heard that around 2 a.m. on April 9, 2007, police were alerted to a break-in at the school at 10210 108th Ave. A patrol car driving around the school noticed what appeared to be flames on the first level of the school near the north entrance.
When the police officers checked, they found a small fire on a couch which they put out with a fire extinguisher. While they were still in the school, Mattice came down a flight of stairs from the second floor carrying a fire extinguisher himself.
“He gave them excuses as to why he was there, but they didn’t make sense,” Crown prosecutor Kerry Hart said.
While police were arresting Mattice, the school’s fire alarm went off. That is when the arresting officers noticed flickering coming from windows on the second level of the school.
By the time fire crews arrived, the fire had reached such an intensity that it blew out all the windows of the second-floor library.
Mattice was found with a bloodied lighter in his possession and a cut to his right thumb. He also had about 20 assorted chocolate bars on him which came from a vending machine that had been broken into, said Hart.
There were also shards of glass on his clothing. The school’s security system showed a point of entry into the school, as well as a series of hits which tracked the intruder’s movements to the vending machine then up to the second-floor library and back down to where Mattice met up with police officers, Hart said.
The case will be back before the courts April 9 when a date will be set for sentencing.
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