ARSONIST CAUGHT (From Warrington Guardian)

ARSONIST CAUGHT

A POTENTIAL arsonist will have his 15 minutes of fame after being caught on camera in the act of trying to set fire a shop in Runcorn on Saturday night.

A man was arrested by police after being identified from security video footage of a person pushing a bottle of flammable liquid through the letterbox of Colin Sykes Foods on Church Street shortly after 2am.

The only thing that stopped the shop going up in smoke was that the burning material landed on a display blackboard - right beside a stack of toilet rolls that would have been of obvious use to an arsonist - which prevented it spreading.

CS spokesman Peter Sykes said: "It was very lucky, had it reached the toilet rolls then the whole shop could have gone up."

The arrested man will apear in court next month.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.