Inuvik man to serve 9 more months for Whitehorse apartment arson that injured 3

An Inuvik man will serve nine more months in jail for setting fire to his then-partner's downtown Whitehorse apartment building in 2021, injuring three people and destroying two units. 

Yukon territorial court deputy judge David Walker sentenced Zander Sydney-Firth in Whitehorse on Nov. 3 to three-and-a-half years in jail but gave him credit for time already served.

The 22-year-old earlier pleaded guilty to one count each of arson causing bodily harm, violating a release order, being unlawfully in a dwelling and assault. 

According to an agreed statement of facts, Sydney-Firth was drinking with his partner and three other people at the Ryder Apartment, a building with more than 20 units on Sixth Avenue near Lambert Street, on Jan. 8, 2021. 

Sydney-Firth and his partner got into an argument, during which he made a "threatening comment" before leaving the apartment. 

A building resident told police she had a jerrycan of gasoline on her front porch, and Sydney-Firth knocked on her door that night but she refused to let him in. The fire alarm went off a few minutes later, she said, and her jerrycan was no longer there.

Security footage from the nearby Whitehorse RCMP detachment showed a figure walking from the woman's unit to the unit Sydney-Firth's partner lived in, then walking away as the entranceway became "engulfed in fire." 

Two people in the unit escaped out a window; while one was unscathed, the other got stuck and suffered burns and smoke inhalation. 

Another building resident who left when the fire alarm went off but went back to retrieve his car keys found Sydney-Firth in his apartment and kicked him out. 

Sydney-Firth's partner and her friend, meanwhile, had to be rescued by firefighters. Both suffered serious burns and smoke inhalation, with the friend medevac'd to Vancouver where she remained sedated and intubated for a week before she could breathe on her own. The partner was in the Whitehorse hospital's intensive care unit for nearly three weeks before being transferred to Vancouver, where she received skin grafts on her hands.

The partner's apartment and a neighbouring unit were destroyed in the blaze. 

At the time, Sydney-Firth was under a release order that required him to reside in Inuvik, abide by a curfew and not consume alcohol. He was arrested at the River View Hotel the same night and has remained in custody ever since. 

Investigators later detected gasoline on Sydney-Firth's clothes, and he had a cut on his foot consistent with a glass door at the Ryder Apartment that had been kicked in. 

Syndey-Firth's partner told police in February 2021 that he had assaulted her two weeks before the fire.