A 20-year-old London, Ont., man has been arrested and charged with two counts of arson in connection with a $2-million fire over the weekend that destroyed the Black Walnut Bakery Café in Wortley Village.
The news comes a day after London police revealed they were treating the fire, which occurred around 1:30 a.m. Sunday at 132 Wortley Rd., as suspicious in nature.
Multiple fire engine and ladder companies responded to the early morning blaze, and firefighters were kept busy into the afternoon as they attempted to save what they could of the heritage structure.
Crews were forced to fight the flames from the exterior with the help of an aerial apparatus after a large portion of the building’s roof collapsed, officials said. By the late afternoon, all that remained was a pile of rubble after workers took down the rest of the structure so hot spots could be doused.
Area residents and shop owners have rallied around the café’s owners and employees, expressing sadness about a neighbourhood institution lost to a fire that police now allege was intentionally set.
The suspect, a 20-year-old man identified by police as Sean Moyles of London, appeared in court on Tuesday for one count of arson with disregard to life and one count of arson causing damage to property.
He was remanded into custody and will appear again in court on April 27.
In an email Tuesday, Mandy Etheridge, who owns the café with her brother Ed, said the name of the accused was not familiar to them.
“We are grateful and relieved that an arrest has been made and hopefully now no one else gets hurt,” she said.
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“The police worked very efficiently and we thank them.”
Speaking with Global News a day earlier, the sibling co-owners said fire officials had relayed to them that the origin location of the fire was believed to have been at the rear of the building, on the northeast side.
The pair recounted multiple cases of vandalism that had been seen at the café and at other Wortley Village businesses in recent years, including past cases where strangers had been encountered at the back of the building, where they say Sunday’s fire is believed to have started.
“We came across a gentleman who was actually starting a fire in that same area several months ago, and when we approached him to ask him what he was doing, he chased us with a screwdriver,” Ed said Monday.
Police were contacted, however, the man fled before officers arrived. It’s not clear if that incident and Sunday’s fire are connected.
No one was inside the 145-year-old building at the time of the fire, and no injuries were reported. The hard drive for the café’s security camera system was located in the rubble on Sunday and turned over to police.
The Etheridge family has owned the property since June 2011. Ed and Mandy’s father had been occupying the apartment on the building’s second floor, and was out of town on vacation when the fire happened. His home, possessions, and the sibling’s childhood memories were lost to the fire, they said.
The café’s 20 staff members have also been impacted by the fire, and the plan is to relocate as many of them as possible to Black Walnut’s two other locations.
A second Black Walnut store opened at Richmond and Piccadilly streets in September 2015, and a smaller satellite location opened this year at Western’s Discovery Park.
Both have vowed to rebuild the Wortley Village location, and say they are working with their insurance company to get the process moving.
Members of the community have jumped at the chance to offer support, with a fundraising campaign launched by the Old South Business Association raising more than $3,000 as of early Tuesday afternoon.
“The faster we can get back to serving is the route that we’re taking,” Mandy said on Monday.
“We’re trying to rebuild as much of the original back as we can. We want it to honour what we had before and take that kind of history into the new building.”
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