Serial arsonist Alec Bellamy has been sentenced for starting a fire at a baby boutique in Auckland last year. Photos / Alyse Wright and Jaime Lyth
When Alec Charles Bellamy was sentenced in 2023 for sending lurid and threatening messages to a well-known radio host, it was described to the court as a momentary aberration caused by his deteriorating mental health.
He had since resumed taking his medication and was much better, the court was assured as Bellamy was ordered to serve non-custodial intensive supervision.
The court was given a similar explanation today as Bellamy, 36, returned to Auckland District Court to be sentenced for trying to burn down one of New Zealand’s best-known baby boutiques and two other buildings.
The assurance to the court that he has resumed his medication again got less traction this time and he was sentenced to prison.
“Fortunately, no one was injured,” Judge Ajit Swaran Singh pointed out.
“However, the potential for that was ever present.”
Bellamy has been in jail awaiting trial and sentencing since September 21 last year, when police arrested him about 7am that Sunday as he returned to the scene of his most recent arson at Dimples in Newmarket.
Court documents state he had broken into the baby products retailer about an hour earlier by breaking a glass window with a rock.
“The defendant set fire to a baby pram which was on display,” the agreed summary of facts for his case states. “The fire spread and caused significant damage to the surrounding area.”
The store’s general manager, Donna Gillespie, told the Herald in September that everything that survived the fire would be unsellable due to smoke damage. Although the fire didn’t spread far, it caused the store to close for some time and Gillespie initially estimated the damage would total somewhere near $200,000.
“It’s quite shocking and overwhelming,” she said.
Company officials expressed similar sentiments in an online message to customers.
“Thankfully, no one was hurt, but we’re still coming to terms with the shock and sadness of it all,” the post read.
Investigators quickly realised the baby boutique fire was related to a storage facility fire that had been started about 30 minutes earlier in Epsom, about 1.3km away.
Bellamy had also gained access to that site by smashing a window with a rock. Once inside National Mini Storage on Kent St, he used a cigarette lighter to light a stack of folded cardboard boxes. That blaze, however, was quickly extinguished thanks to sprinklers and a quick response from firefighters.
Updated damage estimates for the two September 21 fires were not mentioned during Judge Swaran Singh’s sentencing remarks today. But lawyers and the judge agreed it was another fire at a city council-owned building, 10 days before the dual blazes, that should be treated as the lead offence.
On that occasion, Bellamy entered the front door of the Dominion Rd building just after 1pm and ignited bedding in the basement about 20 minutes later.
“The bedding caught fire and continued to spread until the basement level of the building was completely engulfed in flames,” court documents outline.
“The defendant exited the building through the front door of Dominion Rd that he entered from. He was pushing a trolley as he exited.”
Court documents described the damage as “extensive”, even though firefighters arrived quickly and were able to extinguish the flames.
The total property damage totalled $13,700.
Bellamy, who flashed a double thumbs-up sign to the media as he was escorted from a holding cell to the courtroom dock, seemed especially eager to address the judge about the building.
“I just want to say that it was an abandoned building,” he said. “I refute that the council owned it, because I was staying at that building for two or three weeks.”
He was homeless at the time.
Each count of arson that Bellamy faced carried a maximum possible sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment.
The stakes were lower in May 2023 when he appeared for sentencing on charges of criminal harassment, which carries a two-year maximum sentence.
In that case, prosecutors outlined how Bellamy had sent 55 messages to Newstalk ZB (operated by NZME, which also owns the Herald) over a period of roughly three weeks in January and February that year.
“Many of these messages were homophobic, sexual and threatening in nature,” police documents stated.
Authorities referred to two specific early-morning messages, directed at ZB host Kate Hawkesby, in which the defendant appeared to outline sexual fantasies.
“These messages caused the victim to fear for her safety,” court documents state.
When asked by police why he sent the messages, the defendant said he felt “threatened” over fears the benefit would be cut. No other explanation or elaboration was provided.
His lawyer at the time, Robert Samuel, told Judge Belinda Sellars his client had stopped taking medication for mental health issues that included paranoid delusions. Once back on the meds and stabilised, Samuel said, Bellamy began to understand how his behaviour could have been unsettling for the broadcaster.
The judge ordered his intensive supervision sentence to include conditions that he not consume illicit substances and that he attend alcohol treatment and other rehabilitative programmes.
Ahead of today’s hearing, Bellamy refused to co-operate with pre-sentence reports. That was a shame, Judge Swaran Singh said, because one function of the reports was to identify mitigating factors that could potentially lead to sentence discounts.
“No, no, I don’t think the judge reads it,” Bellamy responded when the judge checked one more time to make sure he hadn’t changed his mind.
Defence lawyer John Corby asked the judge to consider a starting point of between one and two years’ jail for the council building arson before adding a six-month uplift for the other two fires.
But the judge agreed with the Crown assessment that the main arson should carry a three-year starting point, with an uplift of one-and-a-half years for the Dimples and storage facility fires.
It resulted in a final sentence of two years and four months’ imprisonment after factoring in reductions for Bellamy’s early guilty pleas and for his background.
“I acknowledge that you suffer from mental illness and at the time of offending you were untreated,” Judge Swaran Singh said. “I understand you have been stabilised while on remand.”
But the arsons posed an inherent risk to the public, including the firefighters who responded, he said.
The judge also approved the Herald’s request to take a photo at the hearing, despite an argument from the defence that it would equate to “pillorying of the homeless and the mentally unwell in the community” and would serve only “prurient interests”.
Judge Swaran Singh agreed with the Crown and the Herald that there was a public interest in identifying a person who poses a risk of causing harm when not properly medicated, and who has shown a history of resisting treatment.
“It’s different if a person were taking treatment,” the judge said.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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