TWO arsonists who used a Molotov cocktail to start a £12,000 blaze near a house where a North Yorkshire family was sleeping have been jailed.

Colm Doyle, 31, and John Marc Smith, 61, destroyed a car at the centre of a dispute between a car dealer and a buyer, York Crown Court heard.

Anne Richardson, prosecuting, said the Bradford garage which sold the Audi had promised to repair its defects before giving it to the Harrogate family’s mother, who had bought it.

But when she received the £10,000 car, it still needed £10,000 repairs doing and she demanded the garage take it back and refund her, the court heard.

The garage claimed it would be collected and asked where it was, Ms Richardson said.

Later that day, at 10.45pm when she was asleep at her home, the mother was woken by a loud bang and looking out, saw the car going up in flames on her driveway.

Doyle and Smith had travelled from their Bradford homes, broken one of the car’s windows with a rock and thrown a Molotov cocktail made out of a Lucozade bottle into the vehicle, said Ms Richardson.

CCTV captured them running away as the car with a double pushchair and child seats inside it, worth together £12,000, burned.

“She was in absolute despair. It could have set fire to the house,” said Ms Richardson. The car was near the mother’s home where her children were asleep and only a metre from the neighbour’s house.

Doyle, of Richardson Avenue, Wibsey, Bradford, and Smith, of Carden Road, east Bradford, both pleaded guilty to arson.

Judge Simon Hickey told Doyle and Smith that they were bearing "the consequences of getting enmeshed in criminality of this level". 

Both were jailed for four years. Each have long criminal records and have previously served lengthy prison sentences.

Ms Richardson said police interviewed the garage manager and another person connected to the garage about the blaze, but both had alibis for the time of the fire.

Doyle and Smith left their DNA on the rock or bottle or both.

For Doyle, Michael Jowett said he had started the fire to repay a debt he owed to a drug dealer. He was addicted to crack cocaine. All his offending was related to drugs.

“He is desperate to get some help for his drug use,” said Mr Jowett.

For Smith, Fen Greatley-Hirsch said he had been “coerced” into starting the blaze.

“He was driven to an unknown location and instructed immediately prior to the offence being committed,” said the defence barrister. “He is greatly remorseful for his behaviour.”

He had fallen in with the “wrong crowd” after his drug habit got out of hand.

Greatley-Hirsch had a HGV driving job waiting for him at a skip company.