CALGARY (CBC) - After a home was destroyed by the third fire in less than a month at a Hasidic resort area in Val-David, Que., residents fear an arsonist is targeting Jews - but police say the blazes are not hate crimes.
The latest fire destroyed the cottage in the area north of Montreal on Sunday, just 10 days after a summer home belonging to a rabbi burned to the ground in what police are calling arson. A smaller fire had broken out nearby a few days earlier.
But the pair of suspicious fires don't add up to hate crimes, said provincial police spokesman Jayson Gauthier.
"Nobody has come forward and put up their hands and said, 'Hey, I'm the one who's doing this, and this is the reason why.'"
Police are continuing to investigate, as part of a larger probe into several suspicious fires in Val-David in the past month, Gauthier said.
There is little evidence the Hasidic community is being singled out, he added.
But some people who spend part of the summer in the area - a popular destination for families from the Hasidic communities in Montreal and New York - say the fires feel anti-Semitic.
"Homes around each other, and a few weeks in a row this is going on - I don't know what else to think," said Mayer Feig, a friend of the rabbi whose home was burned down.
"It's unbelievable what's going on here. Because we don't really know why this goes on. We just know that here it's very clear that somebody is targeting this place," he told CBC News.
Feig said many people in the community plan to increase security measures as a result of the arson.
Val-David Mayor Pierre Lapointe said he first thought the fires were hate crimes, but he's not sure now.
"The more you go, the more you feel that it doesn't look like that, but nobody knows exactly," he said on Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment