Cry for help led to arson and jail time

MICHAEL POTESTIO STAFF REPORTER michael@kamloopsthisweek.com

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A fire to break his drug addiction will be released from prison in three weeks.

Owen Lee Coty, 26, was arrested and charged with two counts of arson back on April 30. He pleaded guilty to a lesser offence and was sentenced in Kamloops provincial court on Thursday, July 6.

Court heard that Coty, who was born and raised in Kamloops, started a fire in a recycling bin located in an alleyway that runs between Lethbridge Avenue and Sherbrooke Avenue in North Kamloops.

Th fire damaged the bin and spread to the fence of a nearby property.

Kamloops RCMP said officers were called to the scene at about 6:45 p.m. where Kamloops Fire Rescue had responded to a pair of fires in an alleyway — one between Lethbridge Avenue and Sherbrooke Avenue and the other between 10th Street and 11th Street.

Police identified and arrested Coty nearby on Selkirk Avenue.

Crown prosecutor Anthony Varesi told the court Coty admitted to police he set the recycling bin fire, adding that his mother had recently died and he was upset and depressed about the passing.

Coty’s lawyer, Sheldon Tate, said his client was also dealing with a crystal meth addiction and was homeless, hungry and tired.

“He wanted to get to a safe place,” Tate said. “In these situations, sometimes we don’t recover the individual — there’s an overdose and we don’t hear from them again. Fortunately, Mr. Coty chose life and at least called attention to himself by doing this criminal act. It was a foolish thing to do, it’s something he’s not proud of, but it’s something he needed to do in order to get into custody, find a place to get clean, to arrest his addiction so he could get a foothold on that addiction so he could return to a normal life.”

Coty has 17 prior convictions, including a mischief file from 2016.

He is making arrangements to move into housing provided by New Horizons Support Services in Kamloops upon his release to address his drug addiction, Tate said.

Coty has been in custody since his arrest, having spent the past 68 days in jail.

Judge Oliver Fleck, appearing in court via video conference, accepted a joint submission of 120-day jail sentence with no probation from Tate and Varesi. When given credit for time served in pre-trial custody, calculated at 1.5 days for every day served, Coty was credited 102 days behind bars, leaving him 18 days left to serve as of July 6.

Coty pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of mischief on the first count of arson, and the Crown stayed the second count of arson.

Coty, appearing via video conference from Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre, told the court he was sorry and ashamed of his actions.

Kamloops RCMP and Kamloops Fire Rescue have been investigating a number of suspicious fires that ignited around Kamloops in April.

Coty was one of two people arrested in connection with a fraction of those fires.

The other person, William Aaron Lamb, 22, faces four counts of arson for dumpster fires set downtown in May.