Barn Fires

[li...@zoo.co.uk]

Fireman set barns alight for thrill

A PART-TIME fireman who set light to barns and hay ricks because of the t=
hrill of putting them out was sentenced to two
years' detention yesterday.
Mathew Whiting, 19, caused =A350,000 damage in four arson attacks around =
Hungerford, Berks, last summer. He was told that
he had let down his father, who has been a fireman for 55 years.
Edmund Walters, prosecuting, told Reading Crown Court that Whiting set li=
ght to hundreds of bales of hay and straw and
to a Dutch barn which was destroyed. All the time, he was a retained fir=
eman based at Hungerford.
Whiting, from Chilton Way, Hungerford, resigned from the post after being=
arrested for causing the fires and admitted
four counts of arson.
Paul Reid, defending, said that Whiting's father and brother were both fi=
remen.
"He's very immature. He loved the job and he loved the thrill of it, the =
rush of adrenalin when his bleeper went off and
when he went to the station with the engines running and lights flashing,=
" he said.
"He loved the further rush of adrenalin when the fire was attended and pu=
t out. He loved to be in the thick of it all
the time.
"The offences weren't committed for the thrill of setting a. fire but for=
the thrill of putting a fire out."
Judge Stanley Spence told Whiting: "I accept that you didn't get a buzz o=
ut of setting fires but a buzz out of
fighting them"