A man in his late 30s was indicted on Monday in the Pirkanmaa District Court for an unusual series of arson.
He is accused of lighting a total of 10 fires last summer after dozens of previous arson attacks. In 2002, the Pirkanmaa District Court sentenced the same accused to nine months’ probation in 35 counts, 32 of which were arson.
The suspect was later convicted of a further 12 similar acts, but based on the results of psychological tests, he was declared criminally.
According to the local Aamulehti, the court ordered him to involuntary treatment instead of a criminal penalty.
The man, born in 1984, has admitted that he burned a school, a church and countless other places in Pirkanmaa last summer. He was charged on Monday.
Prosecutors said some of the attacks threatened life or health because people could have been in the buildings. The fires at the school and the car repair shop alone caused almost 50,000 euros in damage.
School, college and church among the destinations
There were arson attacks in the Pirkanmaa region last summer. In early June, the former Nokia car repair shop caught fire. The building had originally been a sauna building owned by Nokia Corporation. The rescue department managed to put out the fire in the garage building, but the outbuilding was completely destroyed.
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While the rescue service was on fire, reports came of a new fire at the former Lautamatta school, less than a kilometer away. It took several hours to put out the fire in the old wooden house.
Ten days later, on June 13, a wall was lit in front of a Nokia Neste gas station in several locations.
At the same time, a row of mailboxes and tarp were lit. The former car repair shop, which had previously closed in June, was now completely burnt down. That evening, a fire broke out alternately at Pirkan College, a regional open educational institution in the same city.
More arson in August
At the beginning of August, a detached house in Tampere’s Tesoma neighborhood was completely destroyed in a fire. The fire also destroyed the carport next to the house and the motorhome inside it.
On the same street, Ristimรคenkatu, a warehouse building and a mailbox were also burned.
On the same weekend in August, police also received information about other attempts to destroy Tesoma. Targets included a church and a nearby car.
Police tracked down the Tesoma fire to a suspected Nokia arsonist. Detective by inspector Jari LuotoThe study director said surveillance camera videos were useful in the study.
In 2007, police reported that the patient could have intentionally caused a fire at Nokia Psychiatric Hospital.
Source: The Nordic Page