A 30-year-old man has been spared jail after admitting to trying to start a fire at an Asda forecourt in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.
Jordan Beal had been asked to leave the adjoining superstore at 2am on July 2, 2025 for refusing to pay for goods and being intoxicated.
He subsequently headed to the petrol station, dragging a bin he then attempted to fill with fuel from two different pumps before lighting tissue paper, Grimsby Live reports. The pumps did not activate, and Beal was arrested the next day.
Beal, who was sleeping rough at the time, has subsequently secured both housing and employment. Letters written to the court by Canon John Ellis and Rev Andrew Tappin from St John and St Stephen and Shalom youth centre stating he had made “significant progress” helped save him from jail.
Sentencing Beal to three years, suspended for three years, and ordering him to undertake an alcohol treatment programme, Judge Gurdial Singh warned Beal he “won’t get a second chance”.
