Arsonist may die in jail Mentally ill man lit fires over care frustrations

A SCHIZOPHRENIC man may spend his last year alive behind bars after confessing to setting a fire that gutted an Ashmore support accommodation centre because he was unhappy with the care.

The 70-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, yesterday pleaded guilty in the Southport District Court to setting his blanket on fire at Cotlew Manor in 2015.

The court heard after lighting the blaze, he left the room and went to have a cigarette while staff scrambled to assist patients in the next-door room, who could not walk, out of the facility before the flames engulfed the building on November 17.

The fire caused more $850,000 worth of damage to the facility and Cotlew Manor was forced to fork out $20,000 to lodge an insurance claim.

But this was not the only time the elderly man took to setting linen on fire to let out his frustrations.

He pleaded guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm and two counts of arson.

The second arson occurred about one year later, on December 7, 2016, at a boarding house in Merrimac.

The court heard the 70year-old set the doona in his bedroom at Westminster House alight about 11pm one evening and then went to sit in the common room.

The second incident caused $34,000 worth of damage.

Judge Catherine Muir said it was “concerning” the man had “committed the arsons because he was frustrated and unhappy with the care in the facilities”.

“This is very said.

“He has taken a view that if he doesn’t like it somewhere he can burn it down.”

Barrister Sarah Thompson told the court her client suffered from schizophrenia and several other mental illnesses and would be under an involuntary treatment order for the rest of his life. serious,” she

The court heard he suffered from significant cardiac failure, had compound fractures to the spine and was awaiting surgery for a large hernia, which the man is required to hold with two hands to walk.

“(My client’s) physical health is deteriorating and he is unlikely to survive the year ... physically,” Ms Thompson said, referring to a medical report that was tendered to the court. “He is in extremely poor health and is a very sick man.”

The man is so unwell, he is looked after by a carer in the court heard.

The assault occasioning bodily harm charge related to an attack on a nurse in the mental health ward at the Gold Coast University Hospital in September 2013.

Crown prosecutor Natalie Lima said the man was sitting on the bed in his room in the dark when the nurse came in.

The 70-year-old man was sentenced to a head sentence of five and a half years’ jail but will be eligible for parole in June 2018, after already serving more than a year on remand. jail,