Arsonist blamed in Princes Town garage fire

AN early-morning fire at a car-parts yard on the M1 Tasker Road is being blamed on a member of the community who is believed to be mentally ill.

During a visit on November 11 to the garage on the corner of Taska Road and Glenroy Gardens, employee and live-in caretaker Sandesh Mohammed pointed to several vehicles parked across the road with broken windshields.

"Watch all them windscreens in them vehicle them there – he mashing it up."

He said the man also lit a fire near another vehicle about two weeks ago, but fortunately, it did not catch.

"He light a fire and throw it in the drain. Look what he come and do now.

"If the firetruck didn't come in time, the whole place could have burn down. Who responsible for it? The first thing they go say is he mad, he can't pay for nothing."

Mohammed lives there with two of his sons, 24 and 21.

He said he had just left to pick up his daughter at St Mary's Village to take her to school when he got news of the fire.

"When I leave here 20 past six this morning, by the time I reach up the road, I get a phone call: the place on fire."

He said his 24-year-old son tried to extinguish the blaze with a garden hose before the fire service arrived and put it out.

Mohammed estimates the fire resulted in at least $200,000 in losses.

"That Lexus that burn down there, that's over 100-and-something-thousand dollars."

Mohammed said other items were destroyed, including working engines, transmissions and interior parts. He said none were salvageable.

Mohammed said the man in question had not been seen since the fire occurred.

Numerous reports had been made to the police about the man but nothing hd been done, he said.

"If they hold him, what he going and do? He going and end up in St Ann's or something.

"We have no benefit to get from it too. But it's the better place for him. It better they go and get treatment and take they medication than they doing that."

Mohammed was concerned about how his boss, Dave "Neck" Kissoondan, was taking the news.

"My boss is a sickly person too. Lucky thing it didn't fly up in he head and he get a heart attack or a stroke or something."

The Fire Service is continuing investigations and working with the police. Investigators told Newsday the Fire Service had received several reports of fires at the site over the last few days which lent weight to the suspicion that the blaze was "incendiary" in nature, meaning it was set by someone, either knowingly or unknowingly. A final determination has not yet been made.