A serial arsonist will spend the remainder of his life in jail after beginning a hearth which destroyed a historic shipyard.
Robert Boyd-Stevenson, 46, was working on the Underfall Yard in Bristol for under three days as a upkeep co-ordinator when he lit the blaze.
Bristol Crown Court heard that the fireplace was began within the Big Shed shortly earlier than midnight on 6 May, and inside minutes was nicely alight.
The hearth was so extreme it destroyed the Big Shed in addition to boats moored close by. It additionally compelled dozens of residents to evacuate from their houses.
Judge Martin Picton handed down a life sentence with a minimal time period of six-years imprisonment after concluding Boyd-Stevenson posed a danger to the general public from additional offending.
“It appears when things in your life are going wrong you react by starting fires or making bomb hoaxes,” the choose stated.
“It has happened with significant frequency to give rise to the concern you are highly likely to do so again – you are clearly dangerous.”
At a earlier listening to, the defendant, of Headford Road, Knowle, Bristol, admitted arson being reckless as as to whether life is endangered.
The court docket heard that Boyd-Stevenson has earlier convictions for arson and bomb hoaxes courting again to 1997 and served an 11-year sentence for comparable crimes.
Rebuilding the shipyard has been estimated to price £2.6m and will take three years to finish, with £200,000 misplaced in income within the meantime.
Some companies that used the yard have been compelled to stop buying and selling, and others have confronted payments of as much as tens of 1000’s of kilos.
Gregory Gordon, prosecuting, famous that the Grade II-listed boatyard dated again to 1809, and that most of the authentic Victorian-era buildings stay to this present day.
Mr Gordon stated: “The Big Shed is a machine workshop and it was one of the last remaining buildings on site that was used for its original purpose. It is a nationally historic, important site.”
Mr Gordon stated forensic examiners concluded an accelerant had been used to the beginning the fireplace. Within quarter-hour, the blaze had quickly unfold to close by boats.
Boyd-Stevenson’s spouse, Laura, informed the court docket she had observed a change in his behaviour within the weeks earlier than the arson, saying he was crying quite a bit and agitated.
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On the night time of the fireplace, Boyd-Stevenson unlocked the yard and went to the Big Shed the place he began the blaze, Mr Gordon stated.
“GPS data puts him at the yard between 9.47pm and 11.48pm,” he defined.
“CCTV records a person walking through the yard and CCTV from nearby streets records his vehicle in the area.”
Boyd-Stevenson then was stated to have watched the fireplace from the close by Millennium Promenade, the place he took a photograph of the blaze and despatched it through WhatsApp to the Underfall Yard’s managing director.
He additionally carried out web information searches for articles concerning the arson and contacted a girl he had been having an extramarital affair with, asking to satisfy her, the court docket was informed.
The defendant returned residence on the morning of 6 May, the place his spouse observed he was calmer, in an identical method to how he had been when he dedicated a bomb hoax at Bristol Airport in 2015.
He was arrested by police later the identical night.
Investigations discovered Boyd-Stevenson had additionally accessed pornography on a pc on the yard and had opened a doc concerning the alarm system. There was additionally cash lacking.
Mr Gordon stated the fireplace additionally precipitated an influence outage within the sluice gates of Bristol Harbour, which might have precipitated “catastrophic damage” to the harbour partitions ought to they’ve failed.
Source: information.sky.com”