A DISTURBED teenager who petrol-bombed a barn, causing £35,000 of damage, has been locked up for nearly four years yesterday.

Leonard Elmore, 19, targeted Pearl House Farm at Howden-le-Wear, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham, which was the home of a woman and her elderly mother.

Elmore, who had been receiving psychiatric treatment, claimed that dogs had been shot there, but he was wrong.

Firefighters could do nothing to save the building and its contents, said Shaun Dryden, prosecuting.

A neighbour of the women saw an arc of flame heading towards the barn. He identified it as a petrol bomb and alerted the fire brigade, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Elmore was arrested two months later and made a full admission, saying he made the petrol bomb and threw it towards the hay in the barn.

The farm was the target of another arsonist two years before, the judge was told.

Elmore gave a curious explanation when police asked him why he destroyed the barn, said Mr Dryden.

He said he had heard that the owners had shot several dogs and that he was an animal lover and was going to do something about it.

When he was told that the women had nothing to do with any shootings, he said he felt bad about it.

Paul Newcombe, mitigating, said Elmore had a tragic family background and had made two suicide attempts before being a psychiatric in-patient at Darlington Memorial Hospital.

Judge Tony Briggs said the farm buildings were vulnerable to attack and that arsonists had to be discouraged by severe sentences.

Elmore, of Taylor Square, Bishop Auckland, who pleaded guilty to the November 23 petrol bomb attack, was sentenced to three years and nine months detention in a young offenders' institution.