Cheat who blew up shop and injured 81 gets prison

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, caused the blast at his failing business, the Homes In Style furniture store in New Ferry, Wirral, on March 25 2017, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

Sentencing him, Judge Thomas Teague QC said: “You have exhibited human selfishness in an almost chemically pure state.”

The businessman 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, following a trial.

The blast, at about 9.15pm on a Saturday night, happened when Blasio opened a valve in his shop to release gas and switched on an electric fire, the court heard.

It destroyed or damaged 63 properties.

Judge Teague told him: “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”.

The judge 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. He suffered a serious brain injury.

Henry Riding, prosecuting, said: “He was left, literally, clinging to life.”

Mr Jones, who was 21 at the time, was in court for the hearing, along with other members of the community.