Shop owner blew up store in insurance fraud
A FURNITURE shop owner has been jailed for 20 years for causing a “colossal” explosion which injured 81 people in an attempt to claim insurance.
Pascal Blasio, 57, of Gillingham, Kent, was found guilty of causing an explosion likely to endanger life and of fraud, in relation to an insurance claim for more than £50,000. The blast, at his failing business, the Homes In Style furniture store in New Ferry, Wirral, happened on a Saturday night in March 2017.
Blasio opened a valve in his shop to release gas and switched on an electric fire, Liverpool Crown Court heard.
It destroyed or damaged
63 properties.
Sentencing him to 20 years in prison, Judge
Thomas Teague QC told Blasio: “You have exhibited human selfishness in an almost chemically pure state.
“You did not care who else might suffer as long as you could swindle the insurers out of £50,000 – money to which you knew perfectly well you had no right.”
He said the blast was “colossal” and “annihilated” the furniture store and dance studio above it, as well as effectively reducing an entire block of buildings “to rubble”.
Judge Teague said it was a “remarkable stroke of sheer good fortune” that no one was killed.
Blasio, whose wife was in tears in court, sat with his head against the glass panel of the dock at times during the hearing and shook his head as the judge read his sentencing remarks.
The court heard that among the 81 victims of the explosion was Lewis Jones, who was waiting at a bus stop when the blast happened, and suffered a serious brain injury.
Henry Riding, prosecuting, said: “He was left, literally, clinging to life.”