Arsonist jailed after torching house with four children inside
A MAN who torched a Birmingham house while four children were fast asleep inside has been jailed for fiveand-a-half years.
Mickel Munn set fire to the property then alerted a neighbour and rescued one of the youngsters himself in a possible ploy to appear ‘heroic,’ the city’s Crown Court heard.
The four children, who had been left on their own, woke up in darkness and surrounded by smoke. They all began to cry and started coughing while one screamed for help.
Munn claimed he cannot remember the incident in 2020 at all.
The 38-year-old, of Mary Road, Stechford, admitted arson being reckless as to whether life was endangered. Judge Samantha Crabb told Munn: “The fact is you set fire to a house in the middle of the night while children slept alone in bed.
“The risk of serious harm frankly could not be much higher. It is pure good fortune the children were not seriously harmed or worse.”
She rejected the notion there was a ‘causative link’ between Munn’s depression and decision to set fire to the home concluding his actions were ‘deliberate and determined’.
Judge Crabb added he had also ‘failed to show any real recognition or wrong-doing’.
Prosecutor Kevin Hegarty said the children all fell asleep in the mother’s bedroom at the back of the property.
Munn knew the woman was ‘in the habit of leaving the children home alone and sometimes overnight,’ and was also aware of where she kept the front door key.
He was captured on CCTV carrying something from the kitchen to the living room which was burning.
Mr Hegarty said Munn left but returned around two minutes later, by which time ‘the fire had developed significantly’ and smoke was ‘billowing from the house’.
He went to a neighbour and said: ‘There’s a fire, are the kids in there’.
Mr Hegarty said: “The children were oblivious to the fire on the ground floor.
“The eldest woke up coughing and could hear the other children coughing.
“At first they thought it was a dream. They soon realised it was a serious matter. The children were in the dark surrounded by smoke.”
One of them rang their mother ‘screaming’ before they opened the bedroom window which looked out on to a pitched roof of a one-storey extension building.
By this time Munn and the neighbour were outside and despite being ‘scared’ three of the children jumped from the roof to the ground. Firefighters arrived moments later to see that Munn was at the window with the fourth and youngest child, who he handed out to safety.
One fireman observed the defendant was ‘extremely calm and relaxed’ the court heard.