A MAN who tried to murder his neighbours by petrol bombing their Penicuik home was jailed for eight years today.
Andrew Brown threw a lit Molotov cocktail through a double glazed window of a house in the early hours of August 28 last year.
Taxi driver Brian Soave was wakened and managed to extinguish the flames in the living room of the family's home.
The
attack was captured on CCTV footage after the family fitted security cameras at their house following previous incidents of vandalism.
A judge told Brown at the High Court in Edinburgh: "No one who saw the footage could fail to be chilled by the deliberate and callous way it was done."
Temporary judge Roger Craik QC said that fortunately thanks to the prompt action of Mr Soave the fire did not spread.
He said a senior fire officer was in no doubt that the lives of the sleeping occupants of the house could have been in great danger from fire, smoke and toxic fumes if the blaze was not put out.
"Nothing that happened in the past could justify this sort of action, particularly when you, your father and sister had moved away from the scene," said the judge.
"This case was a serious attempt to gravely harm this family and has to be firmly dealt with," he added.
After the court hearing Mr Soave said he had been wakened by a loud bang on the night of the attack. "I was in a state of shock. I couldn't believe what happened," he said.
His wife Tracy said they had suffered "hassle" for six and a half years. "We don't know why. Everything they have done has been done secretly," she said.
"I just hope he leaves us alone and we can get on with out lives," she said.
The judge described the film evidence shown at Brown's trial as "one of the most dramatic sequences" he had seen in many years in court.
The hooded attacker was seen appearing in the quiet street outside the victims' home and launching the lit petrol bomb towards his target.
Ex-garage assistant Brown, 23, formerly of Cranston Street, Penicuik, had denied attempting to murder Mr Soave, his wife and sons Brian and Mark by setting fire to their home in the town's Fletcher Grove. But a jury earlier convicted him of the offence by a majority verdict.
Brown was also found guilty of committing an earlier breach of the peace in Fletcher Grove on February 17 last year by threatening to petrol bomb Mark Soave's car.
Mr Soave said on the night of the petrol bomb attack the family were wakened by "a very loud bang".
He told the court: "I went downstairs and opened the living room door and was confronted by the living room on fire."
"I closed the door and shouted upstairs to the rest of the family to get out," he said.
"I didn't realise they were trying to leave upstairs but they were restrained by the flames at the top of the window. They came downstairs and got out the front door," he said.
Mr Soave said he went back in to try to put out the flames. "I was using a cushion. I couldn't put the fire out so I crawled through to the kitchen, soaked a towel and came back and managed to put out the flames," he said.
"After everything had calmed down and we were all outside safely, we realised there had been a petrol bomb put through the window. The living room window was smashed," he said.
Mr Soave, 43, received treatment from ambulance staff for smoke inhalation.
Mr Soave said the CCTV cameras had been up for a couple of years. Vehicles parked outside had been scratched and tyres slashed.
He said one reason they were installed was because of problems with neighbours at the time. Brown and his father, Robert, stayed at a neighbouring house.
Defence solicitor advocate Brian Gilfedder said Brown still continued to deny committing the firebomb attack.
"There is nothing in his background to suggest he is a serious threat to the community," he said.
"Perhaps only by the grace of God, nobody was killed in the early hours of that August morning," he said.
The full article contains 720 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
