WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Quechee man who was charged with lighting a blaze at a Hartford motel 16 months ago in a dispute over a drug deal has pleaded guilty to arson and other charges.

Ethan Lavoie pleaded guilty to the charges of arson, burglary and leaving the scene of a crash in regard to the May 23, 2022, fire at the former Pleasant View Motel on Woodstock Road in Hartford and its aftermath.

He will receive a sentence of three to eight years in state prison, all suspended except for six months, according to a plea agreement entered in Windsor County Superior Court on Sept. 7.

Lavoie has also agreed to pay financial restitution to three victims who had property destroyed in the fire, court records show. Charges of petit larceny and negligent operation of a vehicle have been dismissed.

Police said Lavoie set an apartment ablaze at the former Pleasant View Motel because he believed that the occupant robbed his fiancee of $100 in a drug sale.

The two-alarm fire displaced 16 people who lived at the nine-unit apartment building, and a cat belonging to one of the residents perished from smoke inhalation. Three units damaged in the fire remain closed, said James Cheng, owner of the former motel who purchased the property in 2018.

Cheng, who also owns the China Moon restaurant on Sykes Mountain Avenue in White River Junction, said in an interview Monday that the cost of fully repairing the units and bringing them up to code along with finding reliable contractors may exceed any reasonable time he could earn back the investment.

“It may not be worth it,” he said, noting the total cost would run well into the six figures.

Residents who lived in units not affected by the fire were able to reoccupy their apartments a couple months after the fire, Cheng said.

Lavoie was identified as a suspect in the fire when police reviewed security camera footage that captured a vehicle arriving at, then leaving, then returning to the scene shortly before and after the fire began.

The video showed a man entering and exiting the unit in which the fire started and placing what appeared to be an appliance from the apartment in the back of his pickup truck, according to court documents.

Within minutes of the vehicle leaving, smoke is seen billowing out of one of the units, police said.

The vehicle at the scene was traced back to Lavoie, who under questioning by police acknowledged that he lit items on a bed inside the apartment on fire that he believed belonged to the man who stole money from him in a drug sale. Lavoie told police he thought the fire he set to the items on the bed would burn itself out and he did not expect a conflagration.

He also grabbed a toaster oven on the way out, Lavoie said.

An attorney for Lavoie did not immediately respond to a message on Monday for comment.

Resident Bryce Jackson, who lives with his 12-year-old Boxer-Rottweiler mix named Bridget in the building’s end unit and has resided at the former motel since 2018, said his apartment did not suffer any damage in the fire but he nonetheless spent two months living in a tent — pitched at the state park in Quechee and on the motel property — before he was allowed to reoccupy his unit.

Jackson said he was inconvenienced living in a tent but not nearly as much as his neighbors who couldn’t come back to their apartment and had find other places to live.

“I can live in a tent,” Jackson said outside his apartment Monday before going to work at the convenience store up the road in Quechee. “I’m from Chelsea.”