'I fear someone will be killed' - spate of arsons in Teignmouth

A Teignmouth woman fears for her community after an arson attack destroyed her garden shed and nearly set her family home ablaze.

A home-made petrol bomb apparently started the fire in Coleman Avenue that burned Charlotte Foster’s shed to the ground in the early hours of Monday, August 3.

Firefighters arrived just in time to stop the flames reaching the roof above the bedroom where her nine-year-old son Oliver was sleeping.

That evening there was another arson attack at Teignmouth Hospital in nearby Mill Lane. It destroyed three sheds and spread to a two-storey building.

Police are now linking both fires to another incident three weeks ago in Fourth Avenue, where a small fire had broken out in a garden bordering Charlotte’s.

With three arson attacks in such a small area, and apparently escalating, Charlotte said she’s scared for her neighbours – who include young children and vulnerable elderly people.

She said: “My fear about staying here is them doing it to someone else, and then I have to witness a mother screaming because her child is stuck in a burning house.

“It’s not going to take long before they kill someone.”

When the fire broke out in the early hours of Monday morning, Charlotte and her husband Stuart initially thought their own house was ablaze.

She said: “I was woken by my teenage daughter screaming ‘mum, there’s a fire’… I opened my bedroom door, and our hallway landing window leads on to the garden.. it was just engulfed, it was just orange, and the heat coming through, it was incredibly hot.

“My first thought was to get my son out of his bedroom – we got him up and we left the house – the fire brigade were already here. We put the children and the dog in the car, and we stayed up there a safe distance away waiting for the fire to be put out.

“I was holding back the tears because I needed to be strong for my children, but I was just shocked, because we’d initially thought the back of our house was on fire.”

She said the police and fire service had not initially treated the blaze as suspicious, telling her a faulty solar panel on the shed could have caused it.

They had found an empty beer bottle in the garden, but there was no smell of fuel to suggest that it had been used as an improvised petrol bomb.

But when firefighters returned to check for hotspots, one of them told Charlotte the blaze would have spread to her house if they had arrived just five minutes later.

She said: “That was the reality shock – I could have lost my son. When that kicked in, the reality of it, I went to talk to neighbours.”

After hearing that a beer-bottle petrol bomb had apparently started the fire on the neighbour’s lawn, Charlotte had another look at the bottle that had been found in her own garden. “The top was blackened and burnt, and next to it was the rag … I bagged it up and took it to the police station.”

Later on Monday, police and a fire investigator came to her home and confirmed that the blaze had been started deliberately.

On Tuesday, following the fire at the hospital, Devon and Cornwall Police released a statement on all three incidents.

A spokesperson said: “Police are investigating a suspicious fire in Teignmouth on Monday 3 August.

“Officers were called at 10.35pm by the fire service who were tackling a fire in an outbuilding at Teignmouth Hospital on Mill Lane.

“The fire also spread into a nearby building.

“No injuries were reported.

“The fire is being treated as arson.

“We are also aware of a fire on Sunday 12 July in a garden on Fourth Avenue and one on Coleman Avenue on Monday 3 August, which caused substantial damage to a garden shed.

“Both are being treated as suspicious, and enquiries are ongoing to establish whether they are linked.

“Anyone who saw or heard anything suspicious is asked to contact police via the Force website or by telephone on 101, quoting crime reference 50260205620.”