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Londonderry petrol bomb attack: Three arrested | |
(about 17 hours later) | |
Three people have been arrested in connection with an attack in Londonderry in which a man was set on fire with a petrol bomb. | |
Two youths broke a window and threw the petrol bomb into a house in Benvarden Avenue at around 23.10 BST on Friday. | |
Thomas Curry sustained 40% burns to his body and is in a critical condition in hospital. A 24-year-old man was arrested on Sunday. | |
A 25-year-old man and 44-year-old woman have also been arrested. | |
Mr Curry was rescued from the house at Benvarden Avenue by two neighbours. | |
Ivan Ballard was one of the neighbours who pulled the man to safety. | |
"I got down as low as I could in the smoke. The sofa was on fire which lit up the room a bit more and that's how I saw him," he said. | |
"I tried to drag him from the floor out, but at this stage his clothes had melted to the floor. | |
"The smoke was catching my chest, I couldn't breathe properly, so I called for somebody to give me a hand and my neighbour who went in previously, he came in then and I got a hold of him in the hall and we took him out of the house. | |
"I can't get the images of him in a ring of fire, of him burning out of my head." | |
The injured man is being treated at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast and has undergone at least two operations. | The injured man is being treated at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast and has undergone at least two operations. |
PSNI Ch Insp Jon Burrows said officers are looking at mistaken identity as one line of inquiry for the attack. | |
"Certainly, that is one line of enquiry because Mr Curry is entirely innocent and of course we're keen to hear what the motive for this was," he said | |
"No motivation, no background, justifies the action that was taken, but it would help us make sense of it, it would help our investigators make progress. | |
"I can reassure the public that our most senior detectives are investigating this, but we're still very early in the investigation and I need the community to give us the information about who did this." |