Photo: Glacier Media

A 40-year-old man who was found not guilty earlier this month of deliberately setting fire to a house in North Vancouver has been sentenced to three years in jail for criminally harassing a woman he barely knew.

Yakup Cetin was sentenced March 29 in B.C. Supreme Court for criminal harassment of the woman, who lived in a Vancouver apartment building where he once worked as a maintenance man, and for attempting to break in to her apartment. He was also sentenced for threatening one of her friends and for breaching previous court orders, including orders to stay away from the woman he was stalking.

Yakub pleaded guilty to six charges earlier this year and was found guilty of five more, including criminal harassment, attempted break-and-enter and threatening, by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen on March 10.

In court, Tammen described Cetin’s obsession with the woman, whom Cetin claimed to love “despite barely knowing her.”

Court heard how Cetin persisted in contacting the woman, despite her clear messages she wasn’t interested in a relationship, calling her at night and hanging up, and threatening to kill one of her male friends, screaming that the woman was “his princess.”

Tammen added Cetin was “undeterred by court orders” banning him from contacting the victim.

Tammen found Cetin not guilty March 10 of two counts of arson on charges alleging he used gas to set fire to a doorway of a house on Mowat Place in North Vancouver, where the woman had gone to her mother’s to escape Cetin’s attention, as well as torching a vehicle parked in the driveway.

Tammen said while evidence pointed to the likelihood Cetin did set the fire, and he remained “highly suspicious” Cetin was responsible, there were enough questions about the evidence to leave room for reasonable doubt.

As part of his sentence, Cetin was also ordered to provide a DNA sample and banned from owning firearms for 10 years.