Police probe fire at Pembina Highway motel

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This article was published 16/11/2019 (1868 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One person has died after a fire at a motel on Pembina Highway early Sunday.

Crews from the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service arrived at the Capri Motel, a two-storey inn on the 1800 block of Pembina Highway, at nearly 9 a.m., to respond to the fire, which had broken out in a suite on the ground floor, which has a door adjacent to the parking lot.

Firefighters searched the motel and found one person, who was declared dead at the scene. The other occupants of the motel had fled before crews arrived. One firefighter was injured on scene and taken to hospital in stable condition, the city said.

The motel’s patrons are a mix of long-term residents and short-term guests. Though police couldn’t provide details on how long the deceased had been staying at the motel, a manager told the Free Press they had been there for only a few days.

A neighbour said he was roused awake by the arrival of fire crews and police, and said law enforcement officers had frequented the motel in recent months, with multiple deaths in units.

The police confirmed that in the past three months, officers had responded to two separate reports of sudden deaths at the motel.

Both deaths, on July 28 and Aug. 20, were determined to be non-criminal.

Officers from the forensics team were still on the scene into the mid-afternoon Sunday, and the window of the unit had been boarded up.

The door to the unit appeared marked by smoke damage, and the smell of burnt wood and metal was in the air.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, and no damage estimate was available Sunday.

No further information about the deceased was provided by the fire department or police.

Hotel management declined to provide further comment.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca