This will show that anyone, with the motivation and determination to inflict harm, will do so, with any other means.  Therefore, bans on specific weapons or tools are useless.  And to think this happened in the gun-free, genteel UK?

British boy gets life for killing ex-girlfriend in blaze

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 10:58:00 07/10/2010

Filed Under: Crime, Laws, Punishment, Fire, Youth, Judiciary (system of justice), Prison

LONDON – A 15-year-old schoolboy was sentenced to at least 23 years in prison on Friday for killing his ex-girlfriend and her older sister after setting their house on fire when she dumped him.

Akmol Miah killed 15-year-old Maleha Masud and Nabiha Masud, 21, at their home in Tooting, south London.

Aged 14 at the time of the attack in June last year, Miah looked on the Internet the day before for “how to burn someone’s house down”.

“These dreadful events happened for no better reason than that you wanted to inflict revenge on Maleha and her family for the fact that she ended your relationship,” judge Christopher Moss told Miah.

The youth recruited his cousin, waiter Shihabouddin Choudhury, to help start the blaze by pouring petrol through the Masuds’ letterbox and setting light to it as the family slept.

Choudhury, 21, was also jailed for life and told he must serve at least 21 years behind bars.

Moss said he was “concerned” at the “apparent confidence” with which Miah gave lying evidence during his trial.

Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw said Maleha had been in a “relationship of sorts” with Miah, though not a serious one.

“The two of them broke up and it was then that Miah threatened Maleha that if she did not continue in the relationship he would do something to her and her family,” he said.

“Why he should arrive at the extraordinary decision to burn down their house is really impossible to understand. It was obviously not the reaction of an ordinary and normal 14-year-old, however hurt he might feel about losing a girlfriend.”