AN ALCOHOLIC who set off an explosion on a busy Saturday morning after threatening to blow up a town’s police station has been jailed.

A judge at Warwick Crown Court heard alcoholic Darrell Parker, 48 of Hearthway, Banbury, pleaded guilty to arson being reckless whether life was endangered.

He had placed a paper bag containing a deodorant can on the ground in Leamington Spa town centre, poured lighter fluid over it and set it on fire, sending flames two feet high.

A couple who saw it considered going over to try to put the flames out, but fortunately did not do so – because moments later the can exploded, sending fragments flying about 20 metres.

Prosecutor Michelle Heeley said before the explosion, on the morning of Saturday, December 13, last year, Parker went to the front office of the police station where, as he was rambling about trying to find his family, he was asked to put out his cigarette.

He was then asked to leave, and as he did so he threatened to return and bomb them.

Although the officer did not take the threat seriously, he contacted the town centre CCTV staff with a description of the defendant.

A little later, Parker went to the Home Bargains store where he picked up some lighters and lighter fluid before asking for a can of lighter gas.

When he was told they did not stock it, he asked for a can of deodorant instead, and then left and was back near the police station within minutes.

Just as the town was starting to get busy with Christmas shoppers, Parker ignited his purchases.

He was arrested shortly afterwards at the railway station.

At an earlier hearing, the court was told that Parker’s previous convictions included threatening to blow up a police station in 2006, a bomb hoax in 2007 for which he was jailed, and a further threat to blow up a police station in 2011 when a judge at Oxford Crown Court gave him a community order.

Robert Lindsey, defending, suggested the incident had been ‘a cry for help’ by Parker, who had been an alcoholic since he was 14 but had ‘now engaged with treatment’ while on remand in prison where he has attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Parker was given an extended sentence of four years in jail, of which he will have to serve two-thirds, and will then be on licence for the rest of the term and for a further five years.