A 60-year-old man who was said to be pray­ing ac­ci­den­tal­ly kicked down a light­ed can­dle which caused a fire that quick­ly de­stroyed his split-lev­el home in St James on Thurs­day.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port at about 4 pm Stephen Ma­habir, who oc­cu­pied the up­stairs area of a two-storey con­crete struc­ture com­pris­ing three bed­rooms both up­stairs and down­stairs, lo­cat­ed at #40 Kan­da­har Street, St James, was pray­ing to a stat­ue where sev­er­al can­dles were lit in the bed­room area. 

Ma­habir ac­ci­den­tal­ly kicked down one of the can­dle­sticks and as a re­sult, his bed caught on fire.

The fire quick­ly en­gulfed the en­tire up­stairs area. 

Ma­habir was pulled out from the up­stairs area by a passer­by who al­so in­formed the down­stairs oc­cu­pants - Franklyn Ma­habir, 43; Ul­ric Singh, 45 and his fam­i­ly all of whom man­aged to leave the prop­er­ty un­harmed.

Fire of­fi­cers as­signed to the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of FS­SO Roberts, vis­it­ed the scene, con­trolled and ex­tin­guished the fire.

Ma­habir had to be hos­pi­talised at the St James Med­ical fa­cil­i­ty by EHS af­ter he be­gan to ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing.  

Loss­es are still be­ing as­sessed.