Man Jailed Over Fire In Heywood That Trapped Boy And Baby

6 June 2012, 17:53 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

24 year old Carl Reeves from Heywood has been jailed for at leat 8 years after pleading guilty to arson with intent to endanger life.

He had been drinking all day when he poured petrol through the letter box of a house on Olive Street. 

He had had a number of disputes with the man who lived there with his partner and two young boys, aged only four and 19 weeks. 

The family were woken up by their smoke alarm and found their house filled with thick smoke, due to a fire in the downstairs hallway. 

After frantically trying to get to their children through the smoke, the man smashed a bedroom window with a television, where a neighbour then helped him to lower down himself, his partner and baby. 

The man and two of his neighbours then forced entry to the back of the house to try and rescue the four-year-old boy, who was still trapped upstairs, but they were beaten back by the flames. 

Fire officers had arrived by this point and were able to go into the house and successfully rescue the young boy. Paramedics had to resuscitate the 19-week-old baby in the ambulance, before the family were all taken to hospital for treatment for smoke inhalation.

Detective Constable Russell Clarke from Rochdale CID said: "This premeditated act by Reeves over an ongoing feud, literally almost cost this family their lives. "I cannot imagine the sheer terror that must have gone through the minds of these parents, who were unable to reach their four-year-old son as their house burned around them, and then had to watch their young baby be resuscitated."