Car used in attack on Oakleigh cigarette store in latest attack linked to illegal tobacco trade
A burning car appears to have been used to set a tobacco store alight in Melbourne’s southeast, the second cigarette shop to go up in flames in a 24-hour period.
Police & Courts
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A burning car appears to have been used to set a tobacco store ablaze in Melbourne’s southeast in a fire that is being treated as suspicious.
The fire is the second blaze at the site in less than a month and comes amid a rolling wave of smoke shop fires which have been linked to the state’s illegal tobacco trade.
Firefighters were called to a tobacco store on Station St in Oakleigh at about 2am Thursday.
They arrived to find a red Kia had been reversed into the two-storey shop.
The car was on fire and the blaze had extended to the tobacco shop and a number of neighbouring stores.
Firefighters took half an hour to bring the blaze under control.
The tobacco store shopfront was completely scorched by the blaze which also damaged a neighbouring Vietnamese restaurant.
Broken glass and ash littered the street on Thursday morning and police were at the scene.
The store was targeted in a fire earlier this month.
That blaze was started in an accounting office next to the tobacco store but police believe the cigarette shop was the target.
A local resident told the Herald Sun he was terrified for the other businesses and homes in the area.
“What’s next, our homes? Our livelihoods?” he said.
“This all just makes me sick.
“It’s not fair and it’s just cooked, having to live in fear like this.”
The owner of a shop neighbouring the burnt-out tobacco store rushed to check his own premises were safe but did not speak to the media.
The Oakleigh fire came a day after a suspected arson attack on a tobacco shop in Whittlesea, north of Melbourne.
That shop, on Church St, was destroyed in a ferocious blaze which broke out at about 2.30am Wednesday.
It was fully alight when CFA crews arrived at the scene.
Members of the arson and explosives squad — already investigating about 20 other tobacco shop fires around the state — later attended the scene.
An arson chemist examined the site on Wednesday.
“Police will investigate any links to the series of fires with organised crime links,” a force spokeswoman said.
Ten CFA crews and Fire Rescue Victoria officials attended.
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