Alcoholic who started Belfast hostel fires sent to prison

Belfast Recorder Judge David McFarland told 36-year-old Thomas Mark Paul McConville one had only to look at the recent devastating London tower block fire to realise the vulnerability of multiple people living together in the same building.

The Crown Court judge said that while McConville deserved credit for his guilty pleas, and although he extinguished the fires, which were limited in both time and nature, his actions had endangered the live of staff and others vulnerable people like himself.

Prosecution lawyer Mark Farrell said that in the early morning of February 17 last, McConville lite two fires in the Stella Maris Hostel in Belfast’s Garmoyole Street. The hostel catered for alcoholics like himself and was known as a ‘wet hostel’ as it allowed its residents to drink on the premises.

The barrister said that while McConville’s bathroom was gutted in one blaze, he was also captured on CCTV throwing “lighted debris” (paper) in the direction of the flat next door. However, moments later McConville was pictured putting out the fire which caused only slight scorch damage.

Mr Farrell said that McConville later told police of lighting papers or cardboard from a carryout, but denied targetting any of his neighbours. He claimed that at the time he was trying to commit suicide as “his head was all over the place”.

Defence counsel Luke Curran repeated that his client was not attempting to pick on his next door neighbour as there was “no anomosity between residents” and what happened was really a very minor incident.

McConville was, said Mr Curran, “a man of good character who effectively had reached rock bottom and acted completely out of character”.

The lawyer said that McConville, who has been sober since the incident, had a long history of “sad personal circumstances” which laid to an abuse of alcohol, and while not disagnosed as suffering from any mental illness, he does have a number of mental issues.

McConville who pleaded guilty to arson, and setting fires, being reckless as to whether the lives of others would be endangered, was ordered to serve 12 months in custody, followed by 12 months on license.