A pair of arsonists involved in a spree of five fires over four days stuck around to watch the targeted buildings burn, a court has heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Christopher Stephen Tilby, 50, and Kelly Leigh Kilpatrick, 37, appeared in the Dunedin District Court this afternoon having pleaded guilty to the arsons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard the pair were in a relationship at the time and Kilpatrick acted as a driver.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While she may have had knowledge of the blazes, counsel Anne Stevens KC said her client was coerced by Tilby.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowledge does not equate to agency,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first blaze took place in the early hours of November 14 when the couple \u2013 along with a third man \u2013 travelled to the derelict Glamis Hospital in Montpellier St.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tilby gave the other man a lighter and he used accelerant to set fire to discarded items before they all left the scene and watched the aftermath from a nearby park.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Less than an hour later, they stopped at a secluded layby in Ocean Grove where a port-a-loo, surrounded by thick vegetation, was set alight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CCTV captured the vehicle leaving the area, the court heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On November 17, again under the cover of darkness, the group went to an abandoned brick building at the rear of a commercial premises in Harrow St.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An identical technique was used to start the fire, which caused such extensive structural damage, the property was expected to be demolished.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Less than an hour later, they targeted a Lees St house.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While it was unoccupied, a prosecution summary noted there were people living in\u00a0adjacent buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This time Tilby and the other man were armed with molotov cocktails.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One hit the exterior of the property and caused no damage but the second smashed through a bedroom window and started an inferno.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The trio watched the unfolding events from the car park of the Oval.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shortly afterwards, they continued on to Brighton Rd where the men set fire to a dense wooded area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Again, they were captured on CCTV leaving the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tilby was also convicted of assaulting a young boy after a violent incident at a public swimming pool in Invercargill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Sellars noted Kilpatrick had left her children at home alone during the nights of the arson spree, but said that spoke more to Tilby\u2019s control than her commitment as a parent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said the woman had developed a pattern of associating with older, abusive men and was working with counsellors to address her issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe doesn\u2019t have a criminal mindset . . . this is an aberration and can be explained,\u201d Mrs Stevens said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tilby also had a tortured past.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Sellars said a report on his background made for \u201calarming reading\u201d and went some way to explaining his 30 pages of criminal history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among the incidents that had left Tilby with PTSD was a particularly distressing episode involving fire which he had experienced at the age of 5.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Counsel Deborah Henderson noted her client had been abusing substances since the age of 13 and had spent most of his adult life in prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, she argued there were positive signs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before the arsons, Tilby had spent a year clean and Ms Henderson said it was only the breakdown of a long-term relationship that resulted in him relapsing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The defendant described being \u201cout of it\u201d during the fire spree.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was jailed for three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kilpatrick was sentenced to six months\u2019 community detention, 300 hours\u2019 community work and 12 months\u2019 supervision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While she could have been disqualified from driving, Judge Sellars said that would have made fulfilling her parental responsibilities almost impossible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other man allegedly involved in the arsons will appear in court this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of arsonists involved in a spree of five fires over four days stuck around to watch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-507277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}