A Kingston, Ont., landlord charged following a 2023 fire that killed two people has pleaded guilty to three provincial offences.
Prithivpal Dadiala appeared in court on Monday, more than two years after a deadly blaze tore through 895 Montreal Street.
Court heard eight people were inside the burning building. Two of them, Bonnie Demille, 35, and her boyfriend Adam Crowley, 34, were on the second storey as flames spread from a kitchen cabinet throughout the home, including the stairway.
Both Demille and Crowley died as a result of the fire.
Police announced shortly after the fire that it wasn't criminal in nature, but Dadiala faced nine charges under Ontario's Fire Protection and Prevention Act, including walls and floors without the proper fire resistance and failing to ensure smoke alarms were in each sleeping room.
Six of those counts were withdrawn Monday as Dadiala pleaded guilty to not having doors with the proper fire protection rating, not installing a carbon monoxide alarm and failing to provide a fire extinguisher.
Dadiala and his lawyer declined to comment.
Family members of both victims were present for the appearance, as were fire officials and two people who said they'd also lived in the house at the time of the fire.
Pleas bring no comfort to victim's family
Melissa Demille, Bonnie's sister, was the first one to arrive at the hospital the night her sister was pulled from the burning house.
She can still smell the room, she told CBC outside court.
"Even with the sentencing, no matter what, it won't be enough," Demille said. "We lost our sister and daughter. No time in jail, no amount of money can bring them back."
Alma Clark, Bonnie's mother, said she doesn't have closure, either.
"I keep looking at Bonnie's pictures, look at my grandkids, see Bonnie in them, and it's tearing me apart," Clark said.
Several of Bonnie's family members shared that same experience, describing looking at a niece, nephew or child and remembering time they all spent together or actually seeing her character and personality in the way they act or talk.
Melinda Jackson, who was also Bonnie's sister, said she's had to relive the pain of losing her "over and over and over."
"It's just constant, constant memory, constant pain," she said.
Building code issues at other buildings
A CBC investigation based on internal emails and reports obtained through freedom of information requests found the blaze led to a blitz of inspections that unearthed dozens of building and fire code violations at other homes belonging to Dadiala and his family.
When the story was published in March 2024, city officials said the inspection orders had either been closed or the landlord was in the process of making corrections.
At the time, the city described the inspections as proactive. Bonnie Demille's family disagrees.
"It's very, very, very unfortunate that it took two deaths to get some action from the fire department [and] from the city to look into landlords," Jackson said on Monday.
Dadiala is due back in court on October 6.