Montreal police have arrested two young people in connection with last week's deadly fire in Old Montreal that killed a mother and her young daughter.

Police allege the older suspect started the fire after throwing an incendiary device into the building, while the other teenager fled in a car after the fire started.

The fire, which occurred on October 4, killed 43-year-old Leonor Grody and her 7-year-old daughter, Verine Reynaud-Grody, both French citizens.

At the time of the fire, 25 people were present in this 160-year-old three-story building in the historical area of ​​the city. Two people were seriously injured, one of them is still hospitalized.

The case has now been handed over to the Quebec Attorney General to determine if charges should be brought against the two young suspects. Detective Inspector David Sheen would not comment on possible charges at a news conference, but told reporters, "We've treated this case like a homicide case from the beginning, but obviously the final decision will be made by the attorney general."

More than 200 officers have worked on the case
More than 200 officers have worked on the case over the past seven days and the Major Crimes Unit is still investigating "to identify the person behind this fire," Caron said.

"We know someone ordered this, so we certainly want to arrest that person," he added.

Two suspects are known to police. When asked if they had ties to organized crime groups, police told the media they were involved with "various groups," but declined to elaborate as the investigation was ongoing.

Similar to the previous fire
The building that caught fire last Friday had a wine bar on the ground floor and a 19-room hostel on the upper floors. The case follows a similar fire in 2023 at another historic building in Old Montreal that killed seven people. In both cases, the target buildings belonged to the same person - lawyer Emile Benamore. Police have increased patrols around several of his buildings over the past week.

Quick arrest in recent case
Shinn offered an explanation for why officers made the arrests so quickly in the latest case, saying the deployment of a large number of officers and past experience with similar cases helped move the case forward.

"Every case is different," he said. "The leads, the documents that we have access to, the timing of our access to them, as well as all the resources that we have deployed through this investigation, so from the very first hour, we mobilized a large number of investigative personnel to conduct the criminal investigation."

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