WINNIPEG - Winnipeg police have identified five people who died following a deliberately-set rooming-house fire, but were still working to determine a motive for the crime.
Three men and one woman died in the wake of the Saturday morning blaze at a building in the Point Douglas district.
A fifth person later succumbed to his injuries in hospital, police say.
Police have charged Lulonda Lynn Flett, 40, with five counts of second-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. She remains in custody.
Police say witnesses told them Flett had earlier been in some sort of altercation with someone at the home.
"We have learned from a number of witnesses that there's possibly a dispute that had evolved between the 40-year-old female ... with one of the persons either residing at that location or known to frequent that location," Const. Natalie Aitken said Monday.
"We still have a lot of people to speak to."
The fire was set on the house's front porch using some type of accelerant and spread very quickly, Aitken said, threatening the lives of all eight people inside the home.
Police identified the five people killed as Norman Darius Anderson, 22; Maureen Claire Harper, 54; Kenneth Bradley Monkman, 49; Dean James Stranden, 44; and Robert Curtis Laforte, 56.
A sixth person remained in critical condition in hospital Monday.
The two-storey rooming house is in a neighbourhood known for drug use and gang problems, but activists have worked for several years to make the area more safe.
In 2007, children from the area wrote to then-governor general Michaelle Jean, telling her they were afraid to walk to school. Jean visited Point Douglas last fall and paid tribute to the community's rehabilitation. A park was named in her honour.
