Arsonist targeting Cameron torched wrong property
AN arsonist who tried to petrol bomb David Cameron’s Cotswolds home with a Molotov cocktail but accidentally torched the wrong house has been detained in a mental hospital.
Joseph Stead, 35, printed out pictures of the former Prime Minister’s home before travelling to the Costwolds village of Dean, near Chipping Norton.
But a court heard the schizophrenic targeted the wrong property and set fire to a neighbour’s £800,000 farmhouse instead on March 9 last year.
He later told psychiatrists that the blaze was intended as a “threat” to the former Witney MP after reading articles about him online.
Stead has now been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and was made subject of a hospital under at Oxford Crown Court on Friday.
Judge Nigel Daly deemed Stead a serious risk to the public and said: “I consider there is a real risk that if he is released from hospital, if he is not under the day-to-day care of persons who can make sure he takes his medicine as appropriate, that there would be a risk to the public of serious harm from him.”
The court was told Stead had travelled from his home in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, to the picturesque village before he set fire to Cameron’s neighbour’s property.
Prosecutor Jonathan Stone said the homeowner, an 82-year-old woman, had been staying at her son’s house at the time.
Stead was later seen swigging from bottles of alcohol before he called the fire brigade at 10.30pm to report the blaze.
A fire report found that the blaze that gutted the house was started by a Molotov cocktail – or petrol bomb – thrown through a downstairs window.
The remains of a bottle of spirits and a petrol-soaked rag were also discovered at the house.
Neighbours and members of the farmhouse owner’s family tried to put out the fire but were ushered away by firefighters.
Stead was arrested at the scene and was heard making bizarre racist and homophobic comments about
David Cameron.
Pictures of Mr Cameron’s home were found in his pockets, while police later found searches for the former PM on his computer.
In a victim personal statement, the owner – an elderly widow who had lived in the property since the 1960s – said her daughter had broken the news shortly after midnight.
Describing her feelings when she heard of the fire, she said: “Murderous, furious and shocked that anyone regardless of their feelings could do such a thing.”
The house had been valued at £800,000 before the fire – with the plot now only worth around half that.
She had lost personal mementoes of her late husband in the blaze, as well as family photographs, books and a collection of crocheted squares she hoped to make into blankets for her great-grandchildren.
Stead, who has no previous convictions, pleaded guilty to arson being reckless as to whether life was endangered.
Graham Blower, defending, said his client had been receiving treatment for paranoid schizophrenia.