Man barricades himself in his hotel room and sets it on fire

A man barricaded himself in the hotel room he was staying in and started a fire, a court has heard. Michael O’Brien would later claim that starting the fire was the only way to alert people to the presence of men outside his room causing problems when police seized his phone.

Swansea Crown Court heard that in February this year O’Brien was one of the residents living at the Alexander Hotel in the Uplands area of ​​Swansea. Robin Rouch, prosecuting, said that on February 7 other residents noticed smoke coming from the door to bedroom number 14 and went to investigate. The knocks on the door went unanswered and when they tried to enter, they discovered that O’Brien had barricaded the room. door. The court heard that while emergency services were called, a number of residents grabbed a fire extinguisher and managed to force their way into the burning room where they found it full of “smoke very thick.

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Police and firefighters quickly arrived on the scene and O’Brien, 48, was arrested. He then gave the officers a prepared statement in which he claimed that the police had taken his phone the day before and that the only way he could draw attention to the fact that there were people at his door “who were causing him trouble” was to light a fire. .

The prosecutor said a fire investigation concluded there were fire seats lit in the room, one under the bed and one near the window. He said as part of the police investigation, officers reviewed CCTV footage from the hotel and found there were no groups of people outside O’Brien’s room on the day in question, as he had stated in his statement. For the latest court reports, sign up to our crime newsletter here

Michael O’Brien, now of no fixed abode, had already pleaded guilty to arson for failing to know whether his life was in danger when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has 17 previous convictions, including dishonesty and criminal damage. In February last year he was sentenced to eight months in prison for robbing a vape shop on Oxford Street in Swansea. Steven Burnell, on behalf of O’Brien, said it was his understanding that police had arrested O’Brien and removed his phone the day before the fire after the accused had made between 30 and 40 calls to the police.

Judge Wayne Beard said he had read the pre-sentence and psychiatric reports on the accused and although no psychiatric illness requiring hospital treatment had been identified, it appeared the accused had had paranoid type thoughts. With a one-third reduction for his guilty plea, O’Brien was sentenced to 32 months in prison. The defendant will serve up to half of his sentence in custody before being released on license to serve the remainder of his sentence in the community.

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