Asylum seekers made homeless after drunk woman caused huge explosion at Coventry home

[dutchman]

Judge Andrew Lockhart QC said: “There were numerous people in the house. There was a very high risk of very serious injury or death"

An explosion blew out the front of a Coventry house where asylum seekers were sleeping after a drunk woman broke in and started a fire.

Marlene Doyle banged on a downstairs bedroom in the property on Stoney Stanton Road so hard that it broke and then climbed in and started the blaze with the occupants' identity card.

The flames quickly spread to the bed and then to aerosol cans which exploded with such force that the bay window, an internal stud wall and a door were blown out.

The court where she was jailed for the arson was told how there were numerous people sleeping inside the property at the time - and the alarm had only been raised when one resident was woken up by her drunken shouts outside.

Doyle, off Welford Grove, Hatton Park, Warwick, denied starting the fire, which caused £20,000 worth of damage and made the property unsafe to live in, meaning all of the tenants had had to be re-housed.

She had previously pleaded not guilty to a charge of arson at the house, being reckless as to whether lives were endangered.

But the 30-year-old changed her plea to guilty at Warwick Crown Court and was jailed for four years.

Judge Andrew Lockhart QC said: “There were numerous people in the house. There was a very high risk of very serious injury or death.

"There were people upstairs, and if the fire had caught even slightly more, they would have been trapped.”