By James Gamble • Published: 30 Nov 2022 • 12:05
Vengeful man sentenced to 54 years for setting fire to house with six people sleeping inside. Image: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com
The fire in Valencia caused serious injuries to those inside the house, including a seven-year-old boy who was forced to undergo more than 13 skin grafts due to the severe burns he suffered.
As previously reported by Spanish news website Levante, The Provincial Court of Valencia heard the now-convicted man – named only as Ion P – had told police the reason he was barefoot and with burns on one of his feet when he was caught at his home just half an hour after the fire because he had attended a barbecue.
But following his conviction at a trial held in September, he has now been jailed for over half a decade on six counts of attempted murder.
The fire, believed to have been committed as an act of revenge, occurred in the early hours of October 14, 2020.
Ion P had gone to the home of his wife’s daughter on Calle Pescadores de València, in the city of Valencia on Spain’s southeastern coast, with some gasoline bottles.
He poured fuel on the doors and floors of the building where his stepdaughter and her partner lived, with a trail of gasoline also leading down the stairs towards the exit.
As he set fire to the fuel – something he had threatened to do over the phone just hours earlier but wasn’t taken seriously at the time – six people lay asleep inside the building.
Four victims in the house suffered severe burns, including a seven-year-old boy who suffered burns to his face, hands, back, arms and chest, and had to be given more than 13 emergency skin grafts in hospital.
According to reports of the sentence in Levante, the convicted man was also ordered by the court to pay his victims compensation ranging between €2,600 and €350,000 up to a total of €715,000.
The convicted man is also prohibited from coming within 500 metres, or communicating with, any of his six victims.
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