The man guilty of setting fire to a transitional house for vulnerable people on John Street in Napanee
a year ago will serve seven years in prison.
Picton man, 32-year-old Andrew Thompson pleaded guilty to arson and manslaughter in May.
Sixty-seven year-old Walter Lasher, a man known around town as a friendly “gentle giant” and who had
developmental and mobility issues could not escape the house and died as a result of the fire on August 3.
Mr. Justice Geoffrey Griffin originally sentenced Thompson to nine years but gave him two years credit for the
one year he’s already served in a Lindsay correctional centre, pointing to deplorable conditions in the jail.
Most of the time Thompson has been there the facility has been in lockdown and his cell, meant for two people,
was triple-bunked.
Thompson, an Aboriginal man, was homeless, a drug addict, and was high at the time he set fire in various locations
in the house.
He had been in a relationship with a woman who resided there and earlier on that day she had told him she had had an affair
with another resident of the home.
Justice Griffin said the arson was a deliberate and persistent act, pointing to the fact that Thompson used up
the fire extinguishers in the house rendering them useless.
In his sentencing address he said Thompson not only killed a man, devastating his family and the community, he
also upended the lives of several people living in the house who were already vulnerable and had suffered many hardships in life.
The judge did give Thompson credit for his guilty pleas, thereby sparing the Lasher family the pain of a trial, and said Thompson
had been doing well while in custody dealing with his drug issues and had been connecting with his Mohawk culture and teachings.
Justice Griffin believed Thompson was a decent candidate for a successful rehabilitation considering he had a loving family willing to support him.
Thompson had mostly grown up without a father at home and any time he did spend with his biological father, a Mohawk man, was taken up by drug and alcohol use.
In his sentencing, Justice Griffin noted that substance abuse was much more common in Aboriginal youth and it tended to begin at a much younger age than in the general population.
He blamed years of colonial policy changes toward Aboriginal people for interfering with the development of healthy Indigenous families and said the policies attempted to separate young people from their native culture.
The Crown had asked for a sentence of 10 years while the defence asked for five to eight years in custody.,
