Arson charges laid against West Kelowna woman for Vernon fires<\/p>\n
Published 9:01 am Wednesday, August 19, 2026<\/p>\n
A woman has been arrested and charged in connection with two grass fires in Vernon\u2019s Commonage earlier this month. <\/p>\n
Emergency crews were called to the first fire near Bench Row Road Aug. 4, at 1:23 p.m. Shortly after, a second fire was discovered in Carlson Park.<\/p>\n
Investigators believe the fires were human caused and intentionally set. <\/p>\n
On Aug. 14, a suspect was arrested and subsequently charged with several Criminal Code offences relating to both fires.<\/p>\n
Mariah Banning Baer, 33, of West Kelowna, has been charged with:<\/p>\n
\u2022 one count, arson in relation to inhabited property
\u2022 two counts, arson in relation to property
\u2022 one count, possession of incendiary material
\u2022 one count, disguising face with intent to commit an indictable offence
\u2022 one count, breach of a probation order <\/p>\n
\u201cWe reached this point in our investigation through a tremendous amount of hard work by our investigators and the collective effort of everyone involved,\u201d said Sgt. David Evans of the Vernon North Okanagan RCMP. \u201cTheir effort, dedication, and excellent police work is what made this outcome possible.\u201d <\/p>\n
The accused appeared in court and has been remanded in custody awaiting a bail hearing. The investigation remains ongoing and no further details will be released at this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arson charges laid against West Kelowna woman for Vernon fires Published 9:01 am Wednesday, August 19, 2026 By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[903,49,48,87674,6090],"class_list":["post-864093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}