Mall parking lot arsonist sent to jail

DUBAI: A man behind a revenge arson that saw 13 vehicles gutted in lames was on Monday jailed for three years and ordered to forfeit the cost of damage.

The Asian bus driver, 42, burned vehicles outside Outlet Mall in an incident sparked by a motive to burn the bus of a competitor who caused him to lose customers, the Dubai Criminal Court learnt.

At around 4pm on May 12, the defendant dowsed the Toyota Coaster’s interior with petrol, lit a cigarette and tossed it inside. The ire extended to 12 other vehicles in the mall’s external parking lot.

During court questioning, he admitted and sought leniency. The court sentenced him to three years in jail to be followed by deportation and ordered him to pay the cost of damages to all vehicles.

The victim –a transport company’s Pakistani driver, 24- said the company had tasked him with transporting passengers employed at shops in the mall. Each was paying a Dhs250 monthly fare.

“I was having lunch when a friend contacted telling me my Coaster was on ire with other adjacent vehicles,” he said adding that he learnt from police that the defendant was behind the arson.

An Emirati corporal said surveillance cameras showed a man with burning clothes running away as soon as the ire broke out. The man was spotted removing the clothes and escaping inside a bus.

Police noted the bus’s plate number and discovered it belonged to a public transport company –driven by the defendant. He was intercepted at the airport and taken to Al Barsha Police Station. He told police interrogators he was competing with the victim in transporting the mall’s employees. “The victim habitually lowered the monthly fare. I kept rivaling with him so I could not lose customers. “However, he kept lowering the fare until I could no longer compete since any further lowering of fares meant great loss. Out of spite, I decided to take revenge by setting his bus ablaze,” he confessed.

He arrived that day, got a plastic container from his bus and used a pipe to ill it with petrol from the fuel tank. He went, wetted the victim’s bus’s seats, smoked a cigarette and tossed it inside.

The outburst of lames caused his clothes to catch ire. He ran, jumped inside his bus and sped off to Jailiya where he pulled over and decided to lee abroad via the Dubai International Airport.