12-year-old charged in connection with Walmart fire

A 12-year-old boy has been charged with arson in connection with a fire that broke out Tuesday evening in the Walmart on Rochdale Boulevard.

(980 CJME)

According to the Regina Police Service, officers and the Regina Fire Department responded to a call of a fire in the store at about 8:20 p.m.

After the fire was extinguished, investigators began their work. Security footage allowed police to identify a suspect, who was arrested Wednesday afternoon.

The boy, who can’t be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is facing a charge of arson. He’s to make his first appearance in Youth Court on Thursday.

The store was closed Wednesday while a restoration company worked inside. Police described the smoke and water damage to the merchandise as “significant.”

Merissa Scarlett was at the store with her husband for some Christmas shopping when they heard a call over the store intercom about the fire.

“We walked out. There was a giant fire … The flame, it was higher than the shelves in the back of the store. It was pretty crazy,” she said.

Leading up to that point, “basically it was pretty quiet. Then when the intercom started going, it didn’t really click into what was going on.”

Regina firefighters attend to a fire inside a Walmart store in the north end of the city on Dec. 10, 2019. (Screen grab from video by Jordan Blodgett/Facebook)

Scarlett said: “Somebody started calling on the intercom that there was a fire and people started running out.”

She commended the staff for getting “everybody out of the store quickly and calmly.”

She estimated there were 100 or fewer people in the store at the time.

The Regina Fire Department said approximately 40 of the people in the store were staff members.

Assistant Fire Chief Dustin McCullough said the department dispatched five trucks to the store to extinguish the fire, adding that’s a standard number for a structure fire.

Scarlett said that after seeing photos of the fire on social media, she believes it broke out in the paper towel and toilet paper section of the store.

“When it caught fire, it was going pretty hard,” she said.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Joseph Ho