Gordon Thompson has been sentenced to 11-and-a-half years in prison
for setting fire to the Reeves furniture store in Croydon during the
London riots.
Thompson, 34, was sentenced at the Old Bailey for arson, being
reckless as to whether life was endangered and burglary.
He was part of a mob which had rampaged through Croydon town centre,
looting Iceland and House of Fraser, before turning his attention to
family-run House of Reeves.
The blaze was so fierce that buildings on the other side of the street
and tramlines in the road caught alight.
Judge Peter Thornton told Thompson: "This was a deliberate, wilful act
of shocking, dangerous vandalism."
"The Reeves family lost their historic business, something they and
generations before had lived and worked for all their lives.
"Their loss is priceless. The trauma they have suffered is inestimable."
The business had begun trading on the site in 1867, and became such a
part of the South London area that the road was named after the store.
Initially Thompson stole a laptop from inside the shop, then borrowed
a cigarette lighter from another rioter and stepped inside what had
been a display window, and set light to a sofa.
As the flames spread he boasted to a passer-by: "It was me. I did
that. I burned Reeves Corner."
The inferno lit up the South London skyline, attracting the attention
of the Skycopter which beamed live pictures which were seen around the
world.
It became one of the defining images of the riots.
And the flames were so intense they leapt across the road and
threatened nearby flats.
Members of the Reeves family were at the Old Bailey to see Thompson sentenced.
Outside the court Maurice Reeves, the owner of the furniture shop,
said it was a "fair judgement".
"It has to be a deterrent," he said.
Earlier, his son Trevor told Sky News: "He (Thompson) just seems to be
a person who's got caught up with the riots and has done something
really stupid.
"I can't possibly imagine what goes through someone's mind to make
them do that, especially as you're local and probably know what the
place is, and what the place means to people.
"It's beyond my comprehension."
The court heard that the total financial loss to the Reeves family was
an estimated £3 million.
During the inferno, Monika Konczyk was inside a nearby flats. She had
only moved to London from Poland three weeks earlier.
She saw Thompson start the fire, but told Sky News she did not think
that within minutes she would need to flee for her life.
"I never thought I'd need to jump from the window because the fire was
coming, never," she said.
But with a policeman inside her flat and others on the ground waiting
to catch her, she was eventually persuaded to jump.
The moment was captured by a photographer and it became one of the
iconic pictures of the summer riots.
The image led to the shy supermarket worker became famous for a few
days; friends and family in Poland contacting her to make sure was
safe.
Now she just hopes that the jailing of Thompson will be the end of the story.
"I'm very scared, I'm very nervous. Sometimes I'm upset and I'm
thinking I only want to forget everything that's happened to me," she
said.
She refused to carry on living in the flat because of the memories,
but it did not make her leave England.
She said such incidents could happen all over the world.
What remained of the Reeves building was demolished within a few weeks
of the inferno, and the site remains empty.
There were no plans to rebuild it until the economy improves. Instead
the Reeves business continues in a smaller building across the road.
And the history lives on in photographs on the fencing which surrounds
the vacant site.
There are pictures showing the Reeves store at the start of the 20th
century as well as pictures of it ablaze on August 8, 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment