P.O. box for fire tips

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34105, 18 March 1976, Page 1

P.O. box for fire tips

Any person who has information about the fire believed to have been deliberately lit in a house in Sydenham on Saturday may now send it anonymously to a Post Office box.

The box — No. 1355 at the Christchurch Chief Post Office — will be cleared daily by Detective Sergeant J. C. Crookston, who is in charge of investigating the fire. All letters will be treated in the strictest confidence. Tire police are already following several leads from information they have got from the public and they will soon be speaking to two men in connection with the fire. Mr Crookston said the aim

of the box was to encourage people who had information but were reluctant to become involved, to pass this information to the police. A man died when electricity lines fell on him during the fire, which badly damaged the vacant Southampton Street house.

On Monday and Tuesday the police visited several hundred houses in Sydenham, asking residents where they were on Saturday night, if they had noticed anything suspicious over the last eight to 10 weeks, or if they had any new neighbours who had been acting suspiciously.

The police are also looking for any clues that will link the Sydenham fire to those believed to have been started by the “Addington arsonist.”