Mansfield arsonist bluffed emergency services with empty petrol can and threats to blow up home
A Mansfield arsonist who sparked a four hour stand-off with emergency services by threatening to set himself on fire and blow his home up was bluffing with an empty petrol can, a court has heard.
Michael Lowe told bailiffs he would set dogs on them when they arrived to evict him from his council home on Babworth Court, on September 18, last year, Nottingham Crown Court was told.
Shouting from a window and brandishing a petrol can, he told them: "I will burn it and you all down."
His partner also shouted: "You need to stop. He's throwing petrol everywhere."
Lowe, aged 36, continued his threats and claimed he had rigged the boiler to explode while carrying “something that might have been a wrench.”
Firefighters, police negotiators, a tactical support team and council officers were deployed at “considerable” cost in a siege which lasted four-and-a-half hours and only ended when entry was forced just before 3pm. No trace of petrol was found.
Lowe and his partner were due to be evicted from their council property after they had damaged and graffitied it.
He later apologised and said he hadn't taken his medication for several days.
The court heard Lowe has 54 previous convictions for 141 offences, between 2002 and 2024, and has been jailed for five years for reckless arson.
The new offence put him in breach of a suspended sentence for criminal damage from May 2024.
Andrew Wesley, mitigating, said Lowe had calmed down thanks to new medication for a borderline personality disorder which was exacerbated by drug abuse.
He had made progress with therapy and bereavement counselling since he was remanded to custody last year, he added.
Judge Stuart Rafferty KC told Lowe the sentence would have been longer if the can had contained petrol and the progress he’d made had only happened while he was locked up and obliged to confront his own problems.
Lowe, of no fixed address, admitted threatening criminal damage. He received 18 months in prison with a package of support on his release.
“I am giving you a chance,” the judge told him on Tuesday. “If there is any more of this nonsense then the sentence I first thought of might come to pass. You have taken small steps. Keep taking them.”