PHILIP Day was identified by police as a ‘resentful stalker’ who reached the ‘end of his tether’ in burning down a school.

Day, 56, was jailed today for 15 years, having been found guilty of two counts of arson and two counts of stalking following a trial earlier this year.

Day, from Runcorn, set fire to UCAN – now Rudheath Secondary Academy – in February 2018 after becoming convinced that a ‘paedophiile ring’ was operating within the school.

These claims were baseless, and Day was also found guilty of arson committed at a house in Essex months earlier after harbouring similarly unsubstantiated theories of child abuse.

He was also convicted of stalking then-UCAN headteacher Cath Green and another teacher at the school, following a ‘campaign’ which saw him accuse them of vile crimes in public forums, including on Facebook.

DC Dave Thomason, who heads up Cheshire Police’s anti-stalking unit, says he felt no empathy for his victims during his ‘quest for justice’.

DC Thomason told the Guardian: “We identified Day as a resentful stalker. These are people on a quest for justice, often querulant individuals.

“They have a strong sense of entitlement that what they are doing is justified because ‘any person in my situation would do the same thing’, and if the law convicts them or gets in the way then the law is wrong.

“You get the conspiratorial ideas coming in that it’s a big stitch-up and ‘they are all out to get me, they are covering themselves’.

“It’s distorted, and that is manifested in Day’s case because there is a complete ambivalence to the distress that he has caused.

“It is incalculable – not least the physical damage and impact on the community, but the ripple effect. It is massive.

“But he is ambivalent to that because to acknowledge that distress, that substantial adverse effect he is having on everybody’s lives, would prevent him from doing what he is doing – if he had empathy for any of that then he wouldn’t be doing it.

“He is the victim in all this and would clearly stop at nothing.”

The anti-stalking unit, a collaborative service between the police and health organisations, is one of just three in the country and its work on the Day case came soon after its formation.

The unit was responsible for identifying Day’s actions as stalking, and advising the police and prosecutors during the investigation.

By pressing charges for stalking, the prosecution case urged jurors at Day’s trial to acknowledge the risk of harm to those targeted.

During the course of his stalking campaign, Day initiated lockdown procedures by turning up at UCAN, causing the victims to hide. He also mentioned their names in his Facebook videos, which often referred to his criminal past and caused fear.

“[Resentful stalkers] feel they are at the end of their tether,” DC Thomason explained.

“With people like Day, when they have used all the options and all the routes are being closed down, and they move to that end of tether scenario, then the gloves are off.

“This isn’t a one-off. The experience of the victim is traumatic. They are persistently exposed not only to the credible threat of him turning up to site but not knowing when he might do that.

“There are substantial changes – security guards, lockdowns – but for the targets they wake up in the morning and think ‘what is going to happen today?’ “It’s that sense of not knowing what’s going to happen, that fear, that effectively closes down their world. It’s extreme.”