KEY POINTS:
A 34-year-old man's flaming suicide attempt on a service station forecourt turned people into heroes.
There were service station staff, who shut down the pumps before the man poured too much petrol out of the hoses.
There was the customer who got out of his car to tackle the man as he tried to set the forecourt alight.
Station staff intervened.
There was the firefighter who dodged a punch and then tackled the blaze with hand-held fire extinguishers.
As the extinguishers ran dry and the fire kept burning, there was the woman who kept finding more and passing them to the fireman.
The fireman doesn't know who that was, but he is clear he felt the combined action of these people on the forecourt of the Lincoln Road Caltex Station on May 23 saved lives.
In his written evidence to a depositions hearing in the Christchurch District Court today the firefighter, Deputy Fire Officer for Metropolitan Christchurch David Burford, said : "I didn't know the pumps were shut off. If they were still active and the fire had spread to them it could have ignited the underground storage tanks.
"This would have resulted in the combustion of several tens of thousands of litres of petrol. Extensive damage to property and loss of life would probably have resulted."
After the man who lit the fire had been tackled by police and handcuffed, Constable Alastair Wall drove him to the station. On the way, the man said he wasn't intending to hurt anyone else but was going to set himself on fire.
"He said words to the effect, `We've all got to go sometime, might as well go out with a bang'."
He told the constable he only did it because of the prescription medication he was on.
The man faces a charge of arson, and charges of assaulting the fire officer he tried to punch, and assaulting a forecourt attendant he doused with petrol before the fire.
He also faces a separate charge of assaulting a male nurse at the hospital with intent to injure.
After the depositions, Nick Atkins and Lyn Holland, Justices of the Peace, committed him to the district court for a pre-trial conference on December 18.
The police handed up written evidence from 11 witnesses, and defence counsel Simon Shamy said the man consented to the committal. He said a psychiatric defence to the charges seemed likely.
The man has interim name suppression, which was extended today until the pre-trial conference. He was remanded in custody under mental health legislation.
From the written briefs of evidence, the woman who kept handing the fire extinguishers to the firefighter appears to be one of the forecourt attendants at the station.
She told of seeing the man on the forecourt with a cigarette lighter. "He was flicking it but I don't think it was lighting."
He soon did get the petrol fire going by setting light to pages from a notebook.
She stopped the customer intervening and when the blaze was under way she handed the fireman at least the first fire extinguisher.
She is likely to be giving evidence at the trial.
- NZPA
