Tyler Spicer, 27, sentenced in Bendigo Magistrates court for arson after torching woman’s bins

A Bendigo man hit the cans one night and went and set a former one-night stand’s bin alight, which burnt her house and killed her children’s pets.

Bendigo fencer Tyler Spicer, 27, set fire to a woman’s bins, burning the side of her house, while her children slept meters away, a court heard.

A Bendigo man set fire to the bins of a woman he had a one-night stand with many years before burning her house and killing her children’s pets.

Tyler Spicer, 27, was convicted and sentenced to 18 month community corrections order and fined $2000 at Bendigo Magistrate’s Court on Thursday after pleading guilty to reckless conduct endangering life and injury and arson after setting fire to the woman’s bins with a cigarette light about 2am on a night in February while she and her children were sleeping.

Bendigo fencer Tyler Spicer, 27, set fire to a woman’s bins, burning the side of her house, while her children slept meters away. Picture: Victoria Police.

Police said it was “sheer luck” the fire didn’t get into the roof. Picture: Victoria Police.

Spicer’s barrister Nikolas Barron told the court the offender had a one-night stand with the victim a number of years earlier, and had decided to go around to her house and set fire to her bins because “he had been drinking and was feeling sorry for himself”.

The prosecution argued it was only “sheer luck” the fire didn’t get into the ceiling and set the whole house on fire with kids sleeping inside.

The victim gave a statement saying she and her children were traumatised – with their pet guinea pigs being killed in the blaze.

“We had no hot water or gas for three weeks,” she said.

The fire destroyed the victim’s children’s bikes. Picture: Victoria Police.

The fire left the victim and her two kids without hot water for three weeks. Picture: Victoria Police.

“I feel lucky to be alive and still have my children.

“How (can) I be such a horrible person that someone would do this to me?”

Spicer was captured on CCTV and was seen by a neighbour “flipping and flopping” back and forth in his thongs observing the fire.

The prosecutor said Spicer had returned to check on the progress of the fire twice before eventually fleeing the scene.

Spicer was previously before the court for “arson” after he and he and a co-accused torched a stolen car, the court heard.

Mr Baron said that it didn’t mean that Spicer was a “firebug”.

Magistrate Russell Kelly said Spicer was working for a “well known Bendigo company” as a fencer, and “his employers stand by him”.

Mr Kelly said it was “bizarre” and “threatening behaviour” for a “hardworking family man” who had built the home he and his partner and stepdaughter now live in.

“He gets on the cans, goes around to a former intimate partner and lights her bins up at two in the morning?”