HE torched three cars owned by disability support services at Raymond Terrace and badly damaged a dance studio in a six-night arson spree during periods of "very high" fire danger and a total fire ban late last year.
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And after lighting the blazes he would often wait around to watch the flames spread and even once pretended to be a witness and reported a fire he had lit to police because he was concerned it was going to burn out of control.
But after spending 49 days behind bars, Peter Joseph King, an 18-year-old on the disability support pension, is back on the street after he was sentenced to a three-year intensive corrections order in Raymond Terrace Local Court on Monday.
King, who had been behind bars since he was bail refused on New Year's Day, had pleaded guilty to five counts of intentionally or recklessly damaging property by fire.
In total the five fires caused more than $200,000 in damage.
It was about 9pm on December 12 when King walked down a long driveway off Port Stephens Street at Raymond Terrace, flipped open the lid to a garbage bin and tossed a lit match inside.
Then King walked to a nearby home and seemed to forget about the blaze.
It was the first fire in what would be a six-day spree and the only time King didn't hang around to watch the fire grow.
And that would prove crucial because inside the bin, among a stack of cardboard boxes, the fire quickly took hold and spread to the adjoining business, DanceXtreme, a large dance studio owned and operated by Libby and Peter Blundell.
The flames spread into the roof and the business suffered significant smoke and water damage.
The Blundells told the Newcastle Herald in December that they were "gutted" by the damage done by the fire, which forced them to cancel a family holiday and looked certain to delay the start of classes this year.
A few nights later, King torched two large skip bins behind banks in the Raymond Terrace CBD and then destroyed three cars on two separate nights by lighting scrunched up balls of paper underneath the fuel tanks.
After his arrest, King told police he did not know the first fire had spread from the bin into the dance studio and denied knowing that the three cars he torched, at separate locations, were owned by disability support services.
He offered no explanation or reason for lighting the fires. The intensive corrections order, or ICO, is a custodial sentence served in the community and involves supervision, random drug testing, drug and alcohol programs and treatment.