Blake Banner: Former NSW RFS volunteer lit fire on total fire ban day ahead of Black Summer fires
An ex-volunteer firey whose car was fitted with a tracking device told detectives he lit a fire with a plastic bottle before returning later to fight it. He was acquitted of six other charges.
The South Coast News
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The firefighting son of two police officers has been convicted of lighting a fire on the south coast during a total fire ban in the lead up to the Black Summer bushfires in 2019.
Judge Robyn Tupman acquitted Blake William Banner, 21, of six of his seven charges of intentionally causing a fire and recklessly letting it spread in Sydney‘s Downing Centre District Court on Tuesday after a judge-alone trial in Bega in December last year. Banner, a NSW Rural Fire Service volunteer, had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Judge Tupman found Banner guilty of lighting a fire at the Bega River on the afternoon of November 26, 2019.
The court heard after his arrest on the night of the fire, Banner told detectives he had started the fire in sand using a plastic bottle full of water like a magnifying glass.
Detectives fitted Banner’s car with a tracking device after fire investigators suspected he may have lit multiple fires in the area over several months, before following him to the river.
The tracking device showed Banner driving “at speed” in a loop to the Princes Highway at Angledale before briefly going home and returning to fight the fire, which had grown to a diameter of 100 metres, the court heard.
Banner later told detectives, in an interview Judge Tupman called “quite confrontational and unfair”, he tried to “stomp” out the fire and pour water on it in an attempt to put it out.
The court heard Banner panicked and tried to call emergency services, before getting “scared” and throwing his phone away.
Banner’s mother Jennifer Westaway and father Steven Banner, both NSW Police officers, took the stand on December 15 to provide an alibi for their son, telling the court he was at home on November 10, 11 and 13 last year and did not light any of the three fires near his home on those days.
Judge Tupman told the court Banner had no opportunity to light the three fires if she accepted his parent’s evidence, before acquitting him of the charges.
She told the court she could not see anything in the parent’s “evidence or demeanour” to show they were not telling the truth.
Judge Tupman acquitted Banner of two more charges, including a fire he came across under a bridge at Tarraganda on his way home, before calling his fire captain who told him to call emergency services.
She told the court cigarette lighters investigators said were likely used to start the fire were still at the scene four weeks later and had not been removed by Banner.
There was no “logical” connection between Banner and the lighters, and they were not like lighters later found in his car by police, she told the court.
She also acquitted him of lighting a further fire beside the Princes Highway at Bega, after a witness, who was the wife of the fire investigator, described seeing a car with a silver stripe and silver bullbar, unlike Banner’s at the scene.
Judge Tupman described the Crown’s evidence as either “absent or uncertain”, and told the court the fact Banner arrived at the scene in full RFS kit without being called to the scene was not evidence of his guilt.
The court heard Banner had likely lied to detectives out of “plain fear” or “shame and embarrassment” about not being able to put out the fire he had started.
Judge Tupman said Banner told detectives he felt “alone and isolated” after being the victim of workplace bullying, and had described the red of fire as like his “anger”.
Banner will be sentenced on November 29.
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