A 48-year-old man accused of setting fire to two Burnaby restaurants last year – one of them twice – will stay in jail for the time being.
Steven Sean Sorenson has been charged with arson in relation to fires at popular Korean restaurant Jang Mo Jib Restaurant (5075 Kingsway) and Sushi Oyama (5152 Kingsway) on April 11, 2020, according to court documents.
He’s also been charged in relation to a break-in on Beresford Street on May 9, 2020 and a second fire at Sushi Oyama on Nov. 6, 2020.
He’s been in jail since Jan. 5 and represented himself at a bail hearing Wednesday after firing his lawyer in August, according to information presented by Crown prosecutor Phillip Sebellin.
Judge James Bahen cautioned Sorenson that bail hearings are highly technical matters.
“I feel that it may be fundamentally unfair for you to proceed,” he said.
But Sorenson, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, said he hadn’t wanted to have the bail hearing that day and he “just wanted to get some more dead time” in case he was eventually convicted of the crimes.
(Dead time is the time a person spends in jail before a trial or sentencing hearing. Because pretrial custody centres typically have fewer resources, time spent in them is sometimes crediting as time-and-a-half, meaning each day counts for one-and-a-half days of a sentence.)
Bahen suggested Sorenson could consent to be detained; that way he could apply for his release later if his circumstances changed.
Sorenson agreed, and his next court date was set for Dec. 15.
Sebellin said the Crown’s case is based primarily on video evidence, where video footage of the person committing the arson will be compared with footage from later dates showing Sorenson wearing what police say is the same clothing.
“There’s no forensics; there’s no fingerprints; there’s no DNA. It all comes down to ‘Was it him or somebody else?’” Sebellin said.
The information presented at the bail hearing has not been proven in court.
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