A judge stated that a woman's anger appeared to "bubble and fester" for several months following her eviction from a shared house.
It ended with Tsai-Wei Hung going to her landlord's house and igniting the entrance, at a time when seven individuals, including two children and an elderly woman, were present inside.
"Go to hell," Hung, referred to by her victims as the "housemate from hell," shouted in Mandarin before setting the fire.
Hung, 33, received a prison sentence of up to six years and two months in Melbourne's County Court on Wednesday following his guilty plea to four cases of arson, extortion, and actions that put people at risk.
Judge Carolene Gwynn characterized her actions as an "extraordinary, unpredictable, and frankly hazardous" reaction to being removed from and instructed to depart her previous shared residence.
"Your hostility towards your victims was clearly continuous, and your anger appeared to simmer and grow," she said to Hung.
You carried out a horrifying revenge campaign, impacting many victims, through a planned sequence of actions, including arson, reckless driving, criminal damage, blackmail and, naturally, the charges connected to your dangerous behavior.
Hung became emotional during the statement and it had to be temporarily paused to give her a moment to compose herself.
Her three-month outburst started on March 11 2024, the day she was forced to leave, when she threw eggs at a garage door.
Hung then sped towards his former housemate Chung-Ting Tuan and landlord Lin Zhang, coming to a sudden stop just one metre away from them.
She crashed into the garage's roller door, causing damage to it and three cars inside, then escaped before the police arrived.
Hung came back the following day and caused more damage to the vehicles in the garage, then went to the police and stated "she only wanted to frighten them."
Three months later, on June 10, she went back to her old home in Clyde North and set the front door ablaze, then ignited two vehicles.
She attempted to blackmail her victims by requesting her landlord to give her $30,000, and cautioned Mr Zhang and his family, "be careful or they will face a similar situation as me, or even suffer greater losses."
The residents of Clyde North were frightened and decided to stay with Mr Zhang and his family on June 11.
Seven individuals were present at Mr Zhang's residence in Berwick - comprising his two children and their grandmother - when Hung arrived on the early morning of June 12.
She splashed flammable material around the front door of the house and lit it with matches. Fortunately, no one was harmed and the fire died down on its own on the concrete.
Judge Gwynn expressed worry regarding Hung's behavior and responses over the three-month period, along with her minimal sense of regret.
"Your ability to handle conflict and/or stress in the future is uncertain," she stated, as she handed down the sentence to Hung.
Hung has already completed one year and seven months of her sentence and must remain in prison for an additional four years before becoming eligible for parole.
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