shop burning
Arsonists Nicola King and Jerely Evans set alight to the homeless man's possessions in this doorway in Portsmouth. Google Streetview

A "cruel" female arsonist has been jailed for urinating on a homeless man's possessions before handing a friend a lighter to burn his bedding in a shop doorway.

Homeless man Roy Ransom was sleeping in the doorway of a shop in Commercial Road, Portsmouth, Hampshire, when he was approached by Nicola King and Jerely Evans at around 7am on 9 April this year.

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CCTV footage of the incident showed the pair talking to Ransom. The pair had apparently been "nice" to Ransom and gave him £5 for a drink, Portsmouth Magistrates' Court heard.

But King, 23, and Evans, 25, started being rude and he walked away from them, only for King to start urinating on his bedding.

The footage continued showing King giving Evans a lighter with the second woman trying for minutes to set the bedding alight, while King watched on and held her bag.

The pair then fled laughing as smoke started to billow from the bedding with firefighters called to put out the fire before it could spread inside the building.

In a statement read to the court, Ransom said: "I'm homeless, everything I own was in the doorway and now most of it is gone.

"I can't stress how gutted and sad I am for this loss. I have literally lost everything I own, I have no bedding, blankets, all of it has been destroyed."

King, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to arson at an earlier hearing, while Evans was also jailed for four months at an earlier hearing for arson, and criminal damage.

Judge Anthony Callaway said it was "a cruel act on a vulnerable and isolated man".

"You and the co-defendant both approached Mr Ransom," reported Daily Mail. "It was you who abused him, it was you who urinated on his property, it was you who put items of his in a bin, on not one but two occasions.

"As far as the arson is concerned it's perfectly obvious to me that both of you have perpetrated that cruel act on a vulnerable, isolated gentleman."

The court heard how King was isolated and vulnerable herself and has a low IQ of 55, which falls close to the level where she would not be fit to plead.