Accused Blames Friend For Starting Thame School Fire

A THAME man accused of deliberately causing a fire that destroyed part of a Thame school, denied in court today that he was responsible.
Craig Michael Ford, 23, told Oxford Crown Court that it was his friend, Kieron Holliday that started the fire inside the Lord Williams’s school’s drama studio on the night of June 30, 2007.
Holliday was arrested and questioned shortly after the fire but later released without charge, and denied in court yesterday that he had started it.

Ford admitted that, after an evening of drinking with friends, he had broken into the drama studio that night with Holliday, with intent to steal but that he had tried to put out the fire which he alleged Holliday started in a cupboard.
The Prosecution repeatedly brought into question Ford’s more recent assertion that the officer who arrested him in the early hours of the morning after the fire, had failed to mention in his notes that Ford had told him it was Holliday who had started the fire, and the Prosecutor disputed Ford’s claim that he had failed to take the opportunity to make the same allegation when interviewed again later, because he was tired, stressed and angry at being asked to explain himself for a second time.

Witnesses had spoken of Ford boasting about starting the fire to get rid of DNA evidence (it was suggested that Ford had cut himself whilst trying to batter down a door to the office in the studio with a piano), and saying that he had to ‘get out of Thame’ and go abroad.
Ford explained this by saying that he was mimicking what Holliday had said to him whilst they were arguing.

The court heard that Ford had been found guilty previously of deliberately setting fire to a motor bike. The Prosecutor questioned whether it could be coincidental that in both that incident and in the case he was now answering, Ford had taken a fire extinguisher and tried to put the fires out.
“You start fires,” said the Prosecutor. You started this one to round off a night fun.”
Ford said that he “had no motivation whatsoever” for starting a fire.

Tomorrow the court will hear a statement from the Defence and the Jury is then expected to consider its verdict.