A 51-year-old schizophrenic sufferer has been sentenced to jail, with time already served, for burning down his retirement village unit on Australia Day, causing $190,000 damage. Rodney James Barling was sentenced at the County Court in Ballarat on Wednesday to 236 days in jail,which he has already served, and a four-month community corrections order. Judge John Smallwood described Barling’s offending as a very serious example of arson, where 38 elderly residents were evacuated from the Bacchus Marsh retirement village facility. “It could have been a total disaster but fortunately it wasn’t,” Judge Smallwood said. He said Barling was in the grips of a psychotic episode when he lit the fire shortly before midnight on January 25. “What is clear now … is you were in the grips of a psychotic episode. You were hearing voices, losing your mind,” the judge said. “You stopped taking your medication and it’s in those circumstances your offending occurred.” Judge Smallwood accepted Barling had general remorse of what had occurred.
