A drunken cocaine-fuelled thug’s homemade petrol bomb exploded mid-air as he tried to take “revenge” against a nightspot that wouldn’t let him in.
Convicted heroin supplier John Kirk, 34, launched the attack at Chambers bar on High Street in Runcorn in the early hours of Sunday, March 6, after being barred entry to Chambers and Alchemy on the same street earlier that night.
Laura Knightly, prosecuting at Chester Crown Court on Monday, said door staff at Alchemy bar had turned Kirk away at 10.30pm on Saturday, March 5 because the head doorman for both Alchemy and Chambers had seen him arguing with door staff outside The Royal pub earlier that evening.
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Kirk, who later told his probation officer he had been drinking alcohol and had snorted a line of cocaine, responded by making “rude comments” and shouting abuse at door staff and bar workers.
At 12.50am, Kirk tried to enter Chambers but was turned away by the same door staff he had been abusive to.
Kirk reacted by shouting “d*ck head”. His two friends were allowed inside but Kirk was removed from the doorway and reacted with aggression.
Ms Knightly said: “The defendant said he was going to ‘ring his boys to come down and sort them out’. “He took his mobile phone out and walked up and down the pavement saying ‘the boys’ were coming down.”
Police stopped and spoke to Kirk, and after discussing the dispute advised him to go home. Kirk told them: “I was brought up to fight your battles.”
He appeared to agree to head home but wandered off to a takeaway where he bought a bottle of Pepsi, drank some and poured the rest away. Kirk then headed to a BP garage and was declined a petrol purchase and instead tried to fill the bottle with dribbles of fuel from the nozzles, and fitted a makeshift fuse.
“With weapon in hand” he returned to Chambers, where people were in the doorway entry. From across the street, Kirk launched his “Molotov cocktail” in a bid for “revenge”.
One doorman saw a “fireball thrown towards him”, but it exploded shortly after taking flight and plunged to the pavement. Kirk ran off towards the bus station while flames raged on the path behind him.
Judge Steven Everett, Recorder of Chester, branded the incident “pretty dramatic”. Ms Knightly said no-one was injured but the door staff were left “very shaky”.
Police identified Kirk from CCTV and by matching his clothing, and arrested him, prompting the suspected arsonist to say: “I’m going straight back to jail, I haven’t damaged anything or injured anyone.” In interview he’d said that remark but otherwise gave “no comment” answers.
On March 11, the head of the doors at Chambers reported that two staff were too frightened to return to work. On April 4 at Chester Crown Court, Kirk, of The Hove, Murdishaw, Runcorn, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted arson with intent to endanger life.
Ms Knightly said the offence took place under the influence of drugs and alcohol, posed a danger to “multiple people”, and was a “revenge attack”. Kirk was on licence at the time, having been released from a three-year sentence imposed in 2020 for convictions for conspiracy to supply Class A drugs heroin and cocaine.
The ECHO reported at the time that Kirk was part of the “Manc Joey” gang that was based in Merseyside but tried to throw investigators off the scent by adopting a Manchester-themed name as they supplied heroin and crack to the south coast.
For the 2020 drug conspiracy, Kirk acted as driver and was arrested with more than 1,000 wraps of Class A drugs while making his way to Exeter on July 14, 2020. Following the arson incident in March this year, the probation service assessed Kirk as a low risk of reoffending but a high risk of harm.
The arson charge carried a sentencing range of four to eight years with a starting point of six years. James Coutts, defending, said the “major problem” in Kirk’s life was taking cocaine and his client recognised that “unless he deals with that and deals with that for good he’s going to find himself back at court”.
He said: “Everything good in his life has been removed by cocaine, and really putting it bluntly he’s a man who does have some positives. He’s been in employment since the age of 16.
“He was able to gain employment on his release.” Mr Coutts added Kirk balanced work with family life and caring for his elderly grandmother in her 90s, and fears “he will never see his grandma again”, a burden that “weighs heavily on his mind”.
He said Kirk’s arson attack was “foolish” and “stupid”, but his remorse was “genuine”, adding Kirk had expressed “shock and disgust with himself”, and “needs to grow up frankly”. Mr Coutts said: “Quite frankly he can’t believe he’s acted so badly in the early hours of that morning.
“He’s going to have to live with that.” Recorder Everett agreed to 25% credit for Kirk’s guilty plea and sentenced him to four years and 10 months in prison.
He said Kirk would have been facing a life sentence “of at the very least 30 years” and might have never been released if his weapon had struck its target and killed someone, instead of falling to the pavement in a “huge conflagration”.
Sending him down, the judge said: “You should have gone home but fuelled by alcohol and no doubt cocaine you lost all sense of reason and you decided in that drug and alcohol fuelled state that you would go to a local petrol station, it might have been a drunken intention.”
He added: “It was incredibly dramatic. You went back across the road. You were shouting abuse at the door staff. You went to throw the bottle with the petrol in it.
“In reality the bottle fell and smashed not very far in front of you. Fortunately for everybody, including yourself, you weren’t successful.” The judge also ordered a statutory surcharge.
