A WOMAN who endangered other people’s lives by starting a fire in her boyfriend’s flat when she was drunk has been jailed for four years.

Elizabeth Jane Ferris, 26, set light to clothing in a bedroom of a three-storey house in Newby Terrace off Wigginton Road on February 10, York Crown Court heard.

People were in the flats immediately above and below the flat where the fire was burning. Ferris left the building and called 999 from her mobile phone to tell police what she had done.

Firefighters put out the blaze, but not before her actions had caused £4,400 of damage.

“It was very dangerous to start a fire on the middle floor when occupants on both the other floors could have been affected,” Judge Roger Ibbotson told Ferris. “Arson in whatever form it is is a serious offence.”

He called the fire “unsophisticated” and said Ferris was always going to be caught because she gave police her real name and used her own phone. York Crown Court heard the fire also cost the landlord £900 in lost rent.

Ferris, of Horbury House, Garden Street, The Groves, York, pleaded guilty to arson.

For Ferris, Nicholas Barker said it was clear from listening to the recording of the 999 call she had been drinking.

The court heard Ferris was an “intelligent” woman who had got good grades at school, but she had had a difficult adolescence which had included being “abandoned” in “difficult and traumatic” circumstances.

Mr Barker said: “That is the beginning of the journey that eventually finished on February 10.”

Ferris developed low self- esteem and anxiety which led to her having difficulties in her social relationships, he said.

It was not clear at the time of the fire whether the flat’s occupant was her boyfriend or her ex-boyfriend. Mr Barker said his client used alcohol to cope with her problems and at the time of the fire was in mourning for the recent death of her grandfather. Firefighters from York and Acomb were called out to deal with the fire, which left the bedroom where it started severely damaged.