A man charged after a Bearberry residence was destroyed in a fire more than three years ago has been handed a federal prison sentence.
Derek Littlejohn was sentenced in Didsbury provincial court last week on a charge of arson causing damage to property occupied by others and a charge of failing to comply with a probation order.
Littlejohn was found guilty of the charges on Aug. 16, 2018.
He originally faced six charges, including criminal negligence – reckless disregard for life, assault with a weapon, and forcible confinement. The remaining charges were withdrawn by the court.
Littlejohn was charged after a Jan. 7, 2016 fire at a rural residence northwest of Sundre along Highway 584.
At the time police said Littlejohn doused the residence and a female occupant of the home with gasoline, which ignited when it hit a wood-burning stove.
The woman escaped uninjured and the accused was subsequently arrested and changed.
During Littlejohn’s judge-alone trial before Judge J. Shriar in 2016, the woman testified that the accused poured gasoline throughout her Bearberry house and on her person.
“He (Littlejohn) said, ‘You don’t know how mad I can get (expletive deleted),'" the woman testified. “It was a full jerry can of gasoline. He had two hands on it. He doused me with gas. He’s dousing me and the home with gas.”
She testified that some of the gas spilled onto a nearby fireplace and immediately ignited.
“I saw the flames coming up behind me. I could see the flames. The gas hit my back and my hair and then the front of me,” she said.
Also during the trial a 75-minute police interview between Littlejohn and Sundre RCMP Cpl. Karl Mandel at the Sundre detachment was played in court.
During the interview – recorded 18 hours after the fire with the accused under arrest – Littlejohn said he and the woman got into a tussle as she held a small can of fuel in the living room of the residence.
The fire started when some of the fuel spilled onto a nearby fireplace, he said.
Littlejohn said the woman was trying to pour some of the fuel on him at the time.
“She went to throw it on me,” said Littlejohn. “I saw she had matches and I said, ‘Oh my God.’ She tried to kill me, she tried to kill me.”
Littlejohn’s trial was adjourned a number of times before resuming last year, when he was found guilty of the two charges.
He was handed three years on the arson charge followed by two years probation, and 30 days concurrent on the probation charge. He was also given a five-year firearms prohibition.
