Police hunt serial arsonist (From Witney Gazette)

Police hunt serial arsonist

9:21pm Monday 8th September 2008 in Witney By Amanda Williams

A serial arsonist is believed to be behind half a dozen fires in west Oxfordshire.

Six properties in the Kingham area, including a school, a holiday cottage and two hotels, have been targeted since May.

Police yesterday would not reveal how the fires started but said the method used was "unusual".

Det Insp Kath Lowe said that police were currently working on anonymous information from a caller to the Crimestoppers team but as yet no arrests had been made.

She added: "Because of the area and type of fire that we are dealing with we believe that the incidents are linked.

"No one has been injured yet, but as time goes on the incidents appear to be getting worse.

"While the fires are obviously very dangerous and we are concerned, the message is not to panic.

"What we are trying to do is give people information and let them know what they can do to help us."

The first of the six properties to be attacked were the Cope Cottages, at Bruern, believed to have been set fire to in the early hours of May 11.

Later the same morning, shortly after 5am, a large wooden outhouse at Bruern Abbey School, used to store gardening equipment, was burned down.

Heating oil tanks in the grounds of the Tollgate Inn at Kingham, were set alight late on July 26.

In the early hours of the next day, July 27, the nearby Mill House Hotel in Kingham, suffered a similar fate shortly after midnight.

At Redbrick House on the Bruern Estate on August 31, gas cylinders were deliberately placed under the diesel heating oil tanks and set alight.

And in another attack, believed to have happened between August 30 and September 2, a ticket booth was burned to the ground at Chastelton House, near Moreton-in-the Marsh.

Claire Holman, a receptionist at the Mill House Hotel, was on duty when four 1,250 litre drums were set on fire in the grounds.

She said: "We could see the flames from the lounge. It wreaked absolute havoc.

"Two of the hotel guests' cars were burned - one was completely melted and the front of the other one was almost as bad.

"I could see the fire boiling up over the wall that surrounds the oil tank and it completely savaged a tree right next to it.

"If the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction, that would have been it for the hotel."

Police are leafleting homes and businesses in the Kingham and Bruern area with advice on how to safeguard properties from potential attack.

Graham Mitchell, of Witney Fire Station, urged people to decide on a fire escape plan and make sure every floor had a working smoke alarm.