It was supposed to be a safe, affordable home for Ontarians with nowhere else to go. But inside, it was horrifying.
The six-storey building at 2515 Queen St. E. didn’t have a lot of tenants other than one elderly woman who lived in one bedroom, and three families who lived in the basement and on the second floor.
There was no water. No elevator. The toilets were in a basement. And there were rats.
After the building caught fire in May 2013, it was gutted by more than 30,000 embers. But while firefighters, police, paramedics and emergency medical technicians fought the blaze, three men were left to clean up the mess.
And one of those men is now fighting for his life.
The fire that destroyed 2515 Queen St. E. in June 2013 was the largest fire in Canada’s history. (Facebook/Justin Caruso)
He’s Justin Caruso.
If you were to look at Caruso, you wouldn’t immediately recognize his face.
A self-described “bad haircut,” Caruso was living his last days under a bridge in downtown Ottawa. By April 2013, he said he was homeless.
“I was living in the woods a few hours outside of Ottawa,” Caruso wrote in an email to CBC News.
“My last apartment was a dump… no couch, no carpet, no furniture, no kitchen, no shower, no curtains… nothing.”
He wrote he got a job with a non-profit agency to help the homeless with mental health issues, but they didn’t take his application. “I’m a certified sleep technician and was hired to assist with the homeless,” Caruso told CBC News in an email.
A friend of Caruso’s who goes to work at the agency for a living told the CBC that Caruso was a good worker and an excellent technician.
Caruso left the city for his last day with his friends.
But just before 11 a.m. on April 27, Caruso was found by firefighters near Lonsdale Avenue and Wellington Street.
He had fallen down an alleyway and was taken to hospital. He died after