Fire-raiser told fleeing residents '˜I'm here to kill the children'

An man who started a blaze in a block of flats after threatening to kill residents was ordered to be detained at a high security psychiatric hospital without limit of time today.

The case was heard at the High Court. Stock Image

Jamie Jackson armed himself with a knife and tried to stab one man who lived at the block before setting fire to a child’s tent and toys.

Four children had to be rescued by firefighters using a turntable ladder from an upstairs flat in the Capital’s Durar Drive and 12 people were treated for smoke inhalation.

When police turned up, Jackson, 32, began shouting “Jesus” and “illuminati” before he was detained.

A judge told Jackson at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday that he was satisfied he suffered from the mental health disorder of paranoid schizophrenia.

Lord Boyd of Duncansby said that if he was not provided with medical treatment there was “a significant risk to his own health, safety and welfare and that of others.”

The judge said he took the view that as a result of his condition there w-as a risk that he may commit an offence if at large.

He made a compulsion order and a restriction order and ruled that he should be held at the State Hospital at Carstairs.

Jackson originally faced charges of wilful fire raising, threatening behaviour, including threatening to kill a woman and her children aged three and four and assault following the incident on July 27 last year, but the Crown accepted that he was acutely psychotic at the time.

The court heard that four weeks before the offences he stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication.

A mother who was making lunch for her children at a flat heard loud bangs at her front door and found it ajar with only a security chain keeping Jackson out. He told her: “I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna stab you.”

Another resident, Lee Humphrey, went to the woman’s flat and saw Jackson approaching again from the ground floor. He tried to stab Mr Humphrey, but missed and was shouting: “I’m Jesus, I’m here to kill the children from above.”

Jackson then started a fire in a flat and residents who tried to flee the premises found they were beaten back by smoke.

The cost of the damage to the flat where he started the blaze was later assessed at £80,000.