A firebombing victim is so afraid her life is in danger she plans to quit her home. Campaigner Lesley Roberts is so traumatised by a fire attack on her car outside her house she is unable to sleep.
Two men targeted her silver Skoda Fabia estate, pouring flammable liquid on it and setting it on fire before fleeing. Lesley believes she has been targeted after campaigning on alleged pollution at a new housing development in her home town of Greenock.
The former nurse said: “I can’t live here any longer. I just don’t feel safe. I can’t live like this. I am a mess. I genuinely fear my life is at risk and I no longer feel safe in my own house.
“I go to bed at 7pm and get up at 1am. I stay up the rest of the night to make sure everything is OK. My mental health is really struggling. Someone has definitely been in my garden – we have a wee extension on the kitchen and underneath there is a space I use for storage.
“I keep gardening equipment and old paperwork there but someone got in and threw it all over my garden.”
Police are hunting the attackers who targeted Lesley’s car on August 16 and have CCTV footage of two men dousing the front of her car. Lesley added: “They are seen lighting it and then jumping back because of the flames that came off it.
“Then they are seen running back down the street. The fire brigade found a bottle of flammable liquid under the car and the lid on top of the car but I am told it will take eight or nine months before they will get forensic reports from the bottle.”
Lesley has campaigned on many issues, including toxic substances on the old Ravenscraig Hospital site in Greenock, believing it caused sickness in staff. Contamination on the site was revealed in a 2017 report by consultants Fairhurst for a housing firm.
The developers were told that before building, remediation measures were required with “regard to human health in some areas of the site”.
It is understood the site had been used as an industrial dump for the area. Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board has always denied there is a serious risk to public health on the site.
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