In the early morning of July 16, 2011, a fire started on the front porch of 288 Austin Street, a two-story rooming house in Winnipeg's Point Douglas neighborhood, and spread into the house. Fire officials said it probably began near the front entrance, blocking the obvious way out, and the front of the building was engulfed by the time firefighters arrived. Eight people were inside. Five died: Norman Darius Anderson, twenty-two; Maureen Claire Harper, fifty-four; Kenneth Bradley Monkman, forty-nine; Dean James Stranden, forty-four; and Robert Curtis Laforte, fifty-six. One person was seriously injured.
Lulonda Lynn Flett, forty, was arrested and charged with five counts of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder, and arson. She had set fire to a couch on the porch; one report says she threw a cigarette onto it. Police said at the time that she had been in a dispute with someone in the house, left, and came back. Early reports described her being thrown out of a party there.
The court record gives the background. Three days before the fire, Flett had been released from custody on assault charges arising from a fight with her boyfriend. His mother and sister lived at the rooming house, and she was angry at the mother, whom she blamed for her arrest. Her sister-in-law, Lynette Harper, was in the house that night and escaped unharmed. The week before, a court had ordered Flett to stay away from Harper; she had received a conditional sentence after pleading guilty to taking part, with another woman, in a 2009 attack on her. Flett was grossly intoxicated when she lit the fire. She wanted, the court heard, to get even with one of the women inside, and her target got out.
In October 2012, under an agreement with the Crown that avoided a long trial, she pleaded guilty before Court of Queen's Bench Justice Brenda Keyser to five counts of manslaughter and one count of arson while reckless as to whether the building was occupied. She wore a sweatsuit and leg cuffs and sniffled through the hearing. "You hesitated a bit," Keyser said. "Are you certain this took place?" Asked whether she understood she was admitting she had set the fire, Flett said yes. Asked whether she appreciated she would go to jail for a long time, she said yes again. Her lawyer, Darren Sawchuk, said she had not intended to kill anyone and that the facts would show why manslaughter was the right charge. Flett was originally from a remote First Nation, he said, and the court ordered a Gladue report, the pre-sentence assessment of an Indigenous offender's background required under a Supreme Court of Canada ruling.
Justice Joan McCawley sentenced her on June 13, 2013. The judge accepted that Flett's heavy drinking and her reduced intellectual capacity helped explain what she had done, and that she had meant only to scare two women inside, but found that they did not excuse it: she was capable of seeing the risk she was taking. "Ms. Flett acted out of anger and is entirely responsible for what occurred," McCawley said. She imposed five life sentences, one for each death, to be served concurrently, with six months concurrent for the arson, and set parole eligibility at seven years, less two already served. If released, Flett would be supervised in the community for the rest of her life. She left the courtroom in tears. Evelyn Laforte, whose son Robert died in the fire, said she had mixed feelings about the sentence.
Flett appealed the sentence, and the Manitoba Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. Because the terms run concurrently, the number of people who died made no difference to when she could first seek parole.