The Witnesses Saw More Than the First Officers Did: Somebody Threw an Incendiary Device Into Pizza Mory’s on Rue de Verdun at Half Past Two in the Morning, Walked Away Before Police Arrived, and the SPVM Has Published Nothing At All (September 20, 2026)

MONTREAL — The thing that separates this file from an ordinary restaurant fire is that people were awake to watch it happen. Witnesses on rue de Verdun told Montreal police they saw a man throw an incendiary device into the restaurant. By the time officers reached the address he was gone. The fire did almost no damage; the account of how it started did not come from a scene examination but from the people standing on the street.

A Call at Half Past Two

The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal received a 911 call at around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 20, 2026, reporting a fire in a restaurant on rue de Verdun, near 2e Avenue, in the Verdun borough on the south-western edge of the island. CTV News Montreal identifies the business as Restaurant Pizza Mory’s and reports that it was targeted in an arson.

The damage was minor and no injuries were reported. The apartments located above the restaurant were evacuated as a precautionary measure. Police say no arrests have been made, and that the investigation remains ongoing to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident.

The Account Came From the Street

What is unusual here is the provenance of the central fact. Police did not describe deducing the cause. Witnesses told police that they saw the suspect throw an incendiary device into the restaurant, starting the fire, and that the suspect fled the scene before police arrived.

That is a direct eyewitness account of the act itself, delivered to officers on scene at two-thirty in the morning. It is also the reason the word arson is attached to this file at all: the fire was small, the building barely marked, and without the people who saw the device thrown there would be little on the physical record to distinguish this from a kitchen fire.

What those witnesses have not produced, at least not publicly, is a description. The reporting carries no age, no height, no clothing, no direction of flight, no vehicle and no indication of whether the suspect was alone. People watched a man firebomb a restaurant and the public account of him is a single word: suspect.

The Device, and the Word This Site Will Not Use

The reporting says incendiary device. It does not say Molotov cocktail, it does not say bottle, it does not say accelerant, and it does not say whether anything was recovered from the floor of the restaurant afterwards. Those are four different things and only the first is on the record. This briefing uses the term the source uses and does not upgrade it into a more familiar one.

Nor is it stated how the device got inside. “Into the restaurant” is as far as the account goes — not through a window, not through a door, not through a mail slot. Whether the premises were open, closed, locked or broken into first is not addressed anywhere in the reporting.

No Communique, and No Name on the Information

The SPVM has issued no written release on this fire. This site read the force’s communiqués index directly at time of filing. The most recent item of any kind is dated 18 September 2026 — the six-arrest Sud-Ouest drug-network takedown — followed by a September 14 jewellery-store robbery, September 10 airbag thefts, the September 9 annual report and September 2 tool-theft networks. There is nothing for September 19 or September 20 at all, and nothing on Verdun.

So everything police have said about this file reached the public through media relations rather than a document. No spokesperson is named. No occurrence or event number exists to follow. No investigating unit is identified — the SPVM operates a dedicated arson section, but the reporting does not say the file has been assigned to it, and this site does not assign it on the force’s behalf. This site will re-check the SPVM newsroom on a later run and fold in any release that appears.

What Is Still Not Reported

No civic address, only rue de Verdun near 2e Avenue. No occurrence number. No suspect description of any kind, despite the presence of witnesses who watched him. No vehicle. No direction of flight. No statement of whether the device or its remains were recovered. No dollar figure on the damage beyond “minor.” No count of how many apartments were evacuated or how many residents were displaced, and no statement of when they were allowed back. No mention of the Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal’s role or of who put the fire out. No statement of whether the restaurant had been targeted before. No motive, and no statement of whether police are treating this as targeted.

No gang, criminal organization or outlaw motorcycle club has been named by the SPVM in connection with this fire, and none is named here. No profile page on this site is linked. Montreal has a long record of restaurants burning for reasons that end up in front of a court, and this site has covered several of them; that history is not evidence about this address, and a named business with a fire in it is not a connection to anything. When police attach an organization to this file, this site will report it. Until then there is a pizzeria, a device and a man who walked away.