{"id":24358,"date":"2019-08-02T11:57:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T15:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24358"},"modified":"2019-08-08T09:03:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T13:03:07","slug":"36-year-old-faces-murder-charges-following-edward-street-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/36-year-old-faces-murder-charges-following-edward-street-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"36-year-old faces murder charges following Edward Street fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 36-year-old Aurora woman is facing second degree murder\ncharges following a fatal housefire in the early hours of Saturday morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On July 27, just before 1 a.m. York Regional Police and\nCentral York Fire Services were called to an inferno on Edward Street, between\nMetcalfe Street and Harrison Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There, officers found the house, which had recently been\nsold, fully engulfed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Central York Fire Services had knocked down the fire by 2\na.m. and when they were able to enter the home, they found the body of an\nindividual, believed to be an adult man, deceased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of the day on Saturday, the York Regional\nPolice Homicide Unit had arrested Melissa Galea, 36, a resident of Aurora, and\ncharged her with Second Degree Murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Galea was held in custody and made her first\nappearance before the Ontario Court of Justice on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

York Regional Police Constable Andy Pattenden told The\nAuroran that the suspect was \u201carrested at her residence, which is not far from\nthe location of the homicide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Constable Pattenden said Tuesday morning the homicide\ntook place in a \u201ctight\u201d community and investigators have been on the scene\nsince the fire broke out speaking to neighbours and potential witnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such witness, Dave Cook, who has been living\npart-time in the community since June, said he was woken up at the time of the\nfire by the sounds coming from the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were two girls who stopped [when they saw the\nfire] and called it in,\u201d said Mr. Cook. \u201cWhen I went out, I was talking to them\nand stuff, but I didn\u2019t see anything except for a lot of flames. The fire was\nhuge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Cook said he was surprised he didn\u2019t see more\nneighbours come outside at the time of the fire, including the residents of\nhomes on either side of the inferno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was pretty much alone out there,\u201d he said. \u201cI never\nsaw [the owner of the home] outside, so I thought he was still inside when the\nwhole house was engulfed by the time I was out there and the firemen were\nthere, but apparently it wasn\u2019t him inside but somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Mr. Cook said he has not seen the primary resident\nof the home on the scene since the fire and he understood the resident was not\n\u201caffiliated\u201d with the victim, Constable Pattenden said more details would be\ncoming within days as the investigation continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt this point in time, we\u2019re awaiting the results from\nthe post-mortem,\u201d said Constable Pattenden. \u201cFrom there, we will be able to\nconfirm the identity of the victim and the cause of death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last weekend was a tough one for the York Regional\nPolice, who are also in the midst of investigating a quadruple homicide in\nMarkham, which took place Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe should have more information before the week is\nover,\u201d said Constable Pattenden. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re kind of at the mercy of the\ncoroner who is very busy. If anyone has any other information and they haven\u2019t\nspoken to investigators yet, definitely come forward and speak with us. At this\npoint in time, we\u2019re not looking for any other suspects and we do believe the\nperson we have in custody is responsible for this and that\u2019s why they have now\nbeen charged. Our investigators are still working through a lot of evidence and\nall that forensics work is still going on, but if [any members of the public]\nknow anything and haven\u2019t spoken with Police, please come forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone with information is asked to contact the York\nRegional Police Homicide Unit at 1-866-876-5423 x2865 or via email at homicide@yrp.ca<\/a>. Tips can also be left\nanonymously with Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-222-TIPS, or logging them\nonline at www.1800222TIPS.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The charges have not been proven in court.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coroner’s report, identity of victim expected within days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/2019-08-01-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6kS","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 12:19:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}