A looter who started a massive blaze that was one of the defining images of the London riots was jailed for 11-and-a-half years on Wednesday. Gordon Thompson, 34, was sentenced at England's Old Bailey central criminal court in London, having pleaded guilty to arson and burglary.
He torched the House of Reeves furniture store in Croydon, south London, on August 8 last year. The store, more than 140 years old, was such a local landmark that it appears on the London transport map - the tram stop outside being named Reeves Corner. The blaze, which reduced the store to rubble, was so fierce that it engulfed neighbouring buildings and pictures of a young woman jumping for her life from a first-floor flat opposite were seen world-wide.
"The images of Reeves Corner burning in August last year were played across the globe and were some of the most iconic of the disorder," Croydon police detective superintendent Simon Messinger told reporters outside court. The maximum sentence for arson is life, but it is rare that sentences go as high as 10 years. Thompson now has plenty of time "to consider the outcome of his reckless actions", Messinger said.
Judge Peter Thornton told Thompson: "This was a deliberate, wilful act of shocking, dangerous vandalism. "The Reeves family lost their historic business, something they and generations before had lived and worked for all their lives. Their loss is priceless. The trauma they have suffered is inestimable." The court heard that the total financial loss to the Reeves family, which has run the store for five generations, was an estimated £3 million ($4.8 million, 3.6 million euros). In mitigation, Thompson asked his lawyer to apologise on his behalf.
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