Two fires reported along outside wall at Kings County mall within a week

January 3, 2024

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RCMP are looking into two fires that occurred outside a Kings County shopping centre in late December.

On New Year’s Eve, firefighters were called to a van on fire behind the Greenwood Mall. A stand-in crew of Nictaux firefighters – who were covering for their Kingston counterparts while they were at another fire elsewhere – responded and extinguished the flames before there was any damage to the building, which was only a few metres away.

RCMP spokesman Const. Dominic Laflamme said police were told that the van appeared to have been abandoned and had been parked at that spot for a couple of weeks.

The previous week, a fire broke out in a dumpster next to the building. Firefighters extinguished the flames and checked to make sure they hadn’t spread into the mall. While the fire didn’t spread, smoke did get inside and was cleared by fire crews using fans.

Laflamme said it’s early in the investigation so police aren’t able to say yet whether the fires are suspicious or may be connected.

“It’s too early for sure,” he said.

The van was seized as part of the investigation, he said.

Over the past decade, there have been dozens of confirmed or suspected arson cases in westerns Kings County and eastern Annapolis County.

In September of 2022, there were three suspected arsons in and around a mobile home park in eastern Annapolis County that were considered possibly related because of their close proximity to one another.

The 2022 fires destroyed a shed, a mobile home and several units in a self-storage facility.

See also Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tough Bronx persona is under fresh scrutiny with a resurfaced childhood nickname from her suburban upstate New York upbringing casting doubt on that publicly portrayed image. The progressive champion’s latest spat with President Donald Trump over the Iran strikes again called into question her true upbringing when she declared on X she was a “Bronx girl" to make her a point against the president. The 35-year-old congresswoman wrote in part on X: "I’m a Bronx girl. You should know that we can eat Queens boys for breakfast. Respectfully," she said, referring to the president’s upbringing in Queens as she called for his impeachment over his decision to bypass Congress in authorizing U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx but moved to Yorktown – which is nearly an hour outside New York City -- when she was 5 years old and went on to attend Yorktown High School where she graduated in 2007. She was considered an accomplished student there and well thought of by teacher Michael Blueglass, according to a 2018 report by local media outlet Halston Media News. “There, known by students and staff as ‘Sandy,’ she was a member of the Science Research Program taught by Michael Blueglass," the report states. “She was amazing," Blueglass said, per the report. “Aside from her winning one of the top spots and going to the [Intel International Science and Engineering Fair], she was just one of the most amazing presenters in all of the years I've been at Yorktown. Her ability to take complex information and explain it to all different levels of people was fantastic." After high school, Ocasio-Cortez attended Boston University, where she majored in economics and international relations, per the report. Ocasio-Cortez’s “Sandy" nickname — which carries a more suburban and preppy tone — appears to undercut her politically crafted image as a tough, inner-city fighter, one she has portrayed since her famous 2018 congressional campaign where she eventually ousted former 10-terms Congressman Joe Crowley. New York GOP Assemblyman Matt Slater, who now represents Yorktown, added to the scrutiny of Ocasio-Cortez’s persona in the wake of her brash with Trump and released images of Ocasio-Cortez from his high school yearbook. He claimed he and the rising Democratic star attended Yorktown High School at the same time when she was a freshman and he was a senior. "I saw the attacks on the president and her [Ocasio-Cortez] claims that she's a big, tough Bronx girl," said Slater. "To sit there and say that she’s a Bronx girl is just patently ridiculous." "Everybody in our community knows this is just a bold-face lie," said Slater on "Fox & Friends First" last week. "She grew up in Yorktown, she was on my track team." "She's lying about her background, she's lying about her upbringing," Slater claimed. Slater’s post sent social media ablaze and prompted Ocasio-Cortez to respond after an image if her family’s home was posted online. “I’m proud of how I grew up and talk about it all the time," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X Friday responding to the post. “My mom cleaned houses and I helped. We cleaned tutors’ homes in exchange for SAT prep." “Growing up between the Bronx and Yorktown deeply shaped my views of inequality & it’s a big reason I believe the things I do today!"

Other fires have destroyed houses, commercial buildings and abandoned properties.

Anyone with information on the fires in December or any of the other blazes since 2013 can contact RCMP or Crime Stoppers.