Wayne Pellett was sleeping in his apartment Wednesday when his dog started barking and he awoke to his room filled with smoke and flames.
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ST. THOMAS – Wayne Pellett was sleeping in his apartment Wednesday when his dog started barking and he awoke to his room filled with smoke and flames.
“The flames were coming up through the floor in my bedroom,” said Pellett, who grabbed his wallet and keys and fled the unit in the burning apartment building at 20 Hiawatha St. in St. Thomas with his dog. “Five minutes longer, my bed would have been on fire.”
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Pellett, 55, narrowly escaped with his life, but he had no idea a neighbour in the multi-unit building had been fatally injured.
A woman with life-threatening injuries not related to the fire was found near the scene on Wednesday at about 12:30 a.m., St. Thomas police said. She died later in hospital.
Investigators ruled the death a homicide and the fire an arson.
Police haven’t released the identity of the woman or the cause of her death, but residents of the Hiawatha building, as well as neighbours, identified her as a tenant at the building and said they heard a single gunshot.
A pool of blood was still visible Thursday in a city parking lot across the street from the burned home, where police officers used a police dog to search for evidence. Roads near the building were closed.
No suspects have been arrested in the homicide – the city’s first in eight years – and police ask anyone with information, including video footage from the area, to contact them at 519-631-1224.
One resident of the Hiawatha building, who didn’t want to be identified, said he fled his unit after seeing smoke and hearing gunfire.
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“One shot is all I heard,” said the man, who came outside to see paramedics tending to a woman on the ground in the parking lot.
“The ambulance came and they loaded her up,” he said.
Gun violence is relatively rare in St. Thomas, where there have been two shootings, neither of them fatal, in the past decade.
On May 16, 2016, a 24-year-old woman was shot inside her Talbot Street apartment. James Alexander Brown is charged with attempted murder and scheduled to go to trial Oct. 21.
No arrests have been made in a second shooting last year. Robin Fillier, 18 at the time, was shot in the torso inside his family’s Palm Street home on Jan. 7, 2023. Investigators say the shooting was targeted.
The Hiawatha Street homicide is the first in St. Thomas since the Aug. 11, 2016, stabbing of 20-year-old William (Billy) Lamers. Corey Jolliffe was charged with first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Pellett said he is struggling to come to terms with his near-death encounter and his uncertain future. He lost most of his belongings in the blaze and has nowhere to live. Pellett praised St. Thomas firefighters for retrieving his parents’ ashes, photo albums and tools from his second-floor apartment.
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The self-employed contractor has lived at the Hiawatha Street building for nearly 13 years and said it has long been plagued by problems related to drug-use and crime.
“It’s been a nightmare. I have 15 people at night sitting on my stairs doing drugs,” he said, adding his dog has picked up drug paraphernalia multiple times.
Pellett’s longtime friend Robert Trimble launched an online fundraiser for him that had raised nearly $1,500 by Thursday.
“Unfortunately my friend has to start over with nothing. We are aiming to help him out and get him back on his feet,” Trimble said.
Pellett is grateful his dog Freedom, a king shepherd-golden retriever mix, saved his life.
“Heroes don’t always wear capes,” he said.
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