Man goes back to school 42 years after trying to burn him down to finish work

It was the packed lunch that made it.

In March, three days after the level 4 lockdown, stressed and desperate to live in a noisy transitional dwelling, Hans Zittersteijn, 57, went to the police for help and then to the hospital.

He waited five hours to see the crisis team, but in the end all he got was a packed lunch.

It reminded him of the lunches he used to get at the Central School in Miramar.

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And it also reminded him of a fire he and another boy had started at school in 1978.

So before the mental health crisis team could see him, he made his way to Miramar where he bought a lighter and newspaper at a gas station, and walked to school.

It was the exact method he had used the first time.

He tried to start three fires, but only one took over a block of classrooms, causing $ 875,000 worth of damage.

When firefighters and police arrived, he was waiting at the door and made an extraordinary revelation, that he was there to finish the work he had started.

Afternoon post Headlines from 1978 show that two boys were charged with setting the school on fire on New Year’s Day.

He and a friend had gone to school with some sheets of newspaper, a lighter, and a knife.

At school they pushed lit paper through a broken window and ran.

Damage to the school amounted to $ 264,134.

Zittersteijn had told the police that they had set fire because they knew there was nothing to steal.

Six classrooms, the library, and the administration offices were destroyed by fire.

He originally pleaded not guilty, but changed his statement four months after the case and was tried in the then Juvenile Court, what is now called the Juvenile Court.

His attorney at the time said he only wanted to rob the school, but set the fire “with petulance and annoyance.”

He was placed in the care of the then Department of Social Welfare. His half of the repair was forfeited.

It is the time between the two fires that shows the tragedy of Zittersteijn’s life. He was sent to the home of the notorious Epuni Boy and then ended up in hospitals and mental institutions for almost 20 years of his life.

Then, at the age of 31, he was asked to leave, like many when the institutions closed.

Zittersteijn spent much of his life homeless, managing only briefly to keep a job or stay at one address.

His attorney Phyllis Strachan said he had institutionalized himself and would quickly become stressed and scared if there were too many people around, given his bad experiences in caregiving.

He was taken to a temporary home as part of the transfer home of people without an address for the confinement, but on March 28 he became stressed with the noise and bad words of others, so he went to seek help.

Wellington District Court Judge Chris Tuohy said Monday that despite his first arson conviction when Zittersteijn was 15 years old, it is to his credit that he has had virtually no other convictions in his entire adult life.

The judge said that when Zittersteijn left the spotlight, “it left him alone, with real difficulties coping with the situation and often homeless and that is what (his life) had been like since then.”

He said Zittersteijn’s reaction to stress was often to threaten to light a fire, although this was the first time he had done so.

Zittersteijn pleaded guilty to the new arson charge and was jailed for three years.

The judge said he did not believe that any sentence imposed should be increased due to a decades-long juvenile court conviction when he has lived most of his adult life without committing a crime.

Zittersteijn told a probation reporter that his goal had been food and a quiet bed.