TWO TEENAGERS were yesterday convicted of causing a £3 million blaze which swept through a former Angus school.

Sam McIntosh Wilkie (17) and Connor Callum Grewar (16) sat ashen-faced in the dock at Forfar Sheriff Court after a jury of nine men and six women returned their guilty verdicts at the end of a four-day trial.

Sheriff Kevin Veal warned the pair that they face a significant period in custody when they next appear before him.

Wilkie, Prosen Road, and Grewar, Westmuir, both Kirriemuir, denied that they had anything to do with the October 29 fire which engulfed Southmuir Primary School in Kirriemuir, which was being used to store equipment after pupils had been moved to a new building.

Jurors took three hours to find them guilty of, while acting along with another, culpably and recklessly setting fire to paper and flammable material which they sprayed on a wall, carpet, a desk and disco light, whereby the fire took effect and destroyed the premises.

They found the pair guilty as charged by majority.

Sheriff Veal said the fire had had an immediate cost of £25,000—the insurance excess bill which landed at the feet of the local authority, the community had lost a major asset and the blaze caused the loss of a property valued at £3 million.

He told the pair he would be “less than honest” if he did not say to them they were “facing detention for a significant time” when they returned to court for sentencing.

“They should come prepared to go straight to detention,” he added.

The sheriff deferred sentence until August 30 for social inquiry, community service and restriction of liberty reports and released them on bail.

It was a dramatic conclusion to a trial which heard how the pair and two other boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, entered the school to “hang out”.

The court was told they took a screwdriver from Wilkie’s house to open a skylight on the roof of the school after gaining access by scaling a drainpipe.

Wilkie went in followed by a teenager before they opened a window for Grewar and the fourth teenager to gain access.

Jurors heard that once inside, they wandered through rooms before ending up at the old school office.

An aerosol can containing a foam substance was found and was sprayed around the office before being ignited by a cigarette lighter belonging to Grewar, a smoker.

Wilkie pointed the finger at his co-accused after Grewar lit a smiley face drawn in foam on the carpet.

He then told how Grewar set fire to foam he sprayed on a desk, a wooden panel over a window, and a drainpipe.

Wilkie said from the witness stand he did not touch the lighter and that he was responsible for extinguishing a number of the fires before they all left the building through a window.

Hours later and shortly after midnight, the first fire crews arrived and thick black smoke and flames was seen coming from the old school.

Such was the scale, two appliances from Kirriemuir, two from Forfar and one from Alyth and Dundee attended, with a specialist aerial platform from Dundee brought in.

The inferno took more than four hours to bring under control and sparked a major investigation.