A woman has been found guilty over the deaths of her four young sons in a fire at their home in London after she left them alone to go shopping.
Deveca Rose went to Sainsbury’s and left her two sets of twins – three-year-olds Leyton and Logan, and four-year-olds Kyson and Bryson – in the locked terrace house in Sutton before the blaze broke out.
The 30-year-old, who had split up with her partner and suffered from mental health problems, denied charges of manslaughter and child cruelty.
On Thursday, an Old Bailey jury deliberated for three hours and 22 minutes to find her guilty of four counts of manslaughter by a majority of 11 to one but not guilty of child cruelty.
The judge, Mark Lucraft KC, said it was a “tragic case” as he adjourned sentencing to 15 November and granted Rose continued bail.
The family had been living in squalor, surrounded by rubbish and human excrement, before the fire at the property in south-west London on the evening of 16 December 2021, the court heard.
The prosecutor Kate Lumsdon KC had told the court: “There was rubbish thickly spread throughout the house. The toilet and the bath were full of rubbish and could not be used. Buckets and pots were used as toilets instead.”
After Rose had gone to the supermarket, a cigarette or tea light in the living room sparked a fire and the boys ran upstairs calling for help.
A neighbour tried to break down the front door, before firefighters in breathing apparatus went in and found the children’s bodies under beds. They were taken to two hospitals but attempts to save them were unsuccessful and they died from inhalation of fire fumes later that night.
Rose arrived home while firefighters were still tackling the blaze and she was taken in by a neighbour. She claimed she had left the children with a friend called Jade, which prompted firefighters to go back into the house to search for her. Police carried out extensive inquiries to find Jade and concluded she either did not exist or had not been at the house that day.
In police interviews, Rose admitted leaving the boys alone in the house on two earlier occasions.
The children’s father, Dalton Hoath, said in a statement that she had left them alone once or twice before to go to the nearby shop. He said he was “devastated” and his world “had been turned upside down” by the loss of his “young, boisterous lads”.
The boys’ paternal great-grandmother Sally Johnson said: “I was aware that she would leave the boys by themselves in the house. When I asked her about this, she would say: ‘Oh no, I just went to the pop shop,’ which is a local shop just seven houses away.
“I do not know how often this happened but I remember several times I phoned the house and Kyson answered the phone and told me: ‘Mummy has gone to the pop shop.’”
Jurors were told that a social worker, Georgia Singh, had raised concerns about the family but that the case was closed three months before the fire.
Cross-examining, the defence barrister Laurie-Anne Power KC said: “You have got a decline in her physical appearance, a decline in the way she is looking after herself, a decline in her mental health, dissociating with her children with her.
“She’s telling you that’s likely to continue and she has point-blank refused to let you see the children. These are all alarm bells when you think about family intervention.
“It was not your decision to close the case but the reason you set out the concerns was because you yourself had those concern about Ms Rose and the boys.”
Singh agreed but told jurors she believed her concerns had been dealt with by another social worker who had gone round later on the same day as her last visit in July 2021.
Source: theguardian.com
