A man is under police guard in hospital after allegedly setting petrol alight at a service station in the inner city on Tuesday morning.
About 2.20am, a man was seen crawling on hands and knees up to a petrol bowser at a service station on Regent Street in Chippendale, before pouring petrol onto the ground, setting it alight and crawling away.
CCTV footage shows a service station attendant running out of the shop to try to put out the fire, while the man grabs two more petrol pumps from a different bowser and pours more petrol on the ground.
The man then lit the petrol, and was forced to quickly crawl away from the large fireball.
Service station attendant Sayed Abbas told Nine News he tried to call his boss but his fingers were shaking so much he could not dial the number.
“But then I got the courage and I rang him up and he told me the first thing to do is to just stop the fuel, that’s what I did,” he said.
“Luckily it didn’t turn out to be a bigger disaster, it could have been worse than that.”
Police said a man was taken to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital with injuries to his knees, and he remains at the hospital under police guard undergoing a mental health assessment.
A police spokeswoman said the fire put itself out, however, the extent of the damage to the petrol station was unclear.
Extracted from The Sydney Morning Herald