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

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.

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.