By The Guardian (World News) | Created at 2024-10-03 15:50:17 | Updated at 2024-10-06 04:21:06
2 days ago
A woman has been found guilty over the deaths of her four young boys in a fire after she left them home alone to go to Sainsbury’s.
Deveca Rose had left her two sets of twins in the terrace house with the doors locked when the blaze broke out on the evening of 16 December 2021.
The 30-year-old defendant, who had split up with her partner and suffered from mental health problems, denied charges against her. 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 tragedy. The prosecutor Kate Lumsdon KC 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.”
Rose had gone to the supermarket, leaving Leyton and Logan Hoath, aged three, and four-year-olds Kyson and Bryson Hoath at the rented home in Sutton, south-west London. When a cigarette or tea light in the living room sparked a fire, the boys were trapped and 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 under beds. They were taken to two hospitals where attempts to save them failed and they died from inhalation of fire fumes.
Rose arrived home while firefighters were 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 having left 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” 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’.”
The paternal step-grandmother Kerrie Hoath described the boys as “polite, carefree and very much loved” and recalled Rose not allowing her into the house. On one occasion she dropped the boys home and asked to use the toilet, only to be told by Rose: “No, there is a Tesco down the road, you can go there,” the court heard.
Hoath said: “The atmosphere was always tense when I was there. It was like Deveca did not want me to be there.”
Jurors were told that a social worker, Georgia Singh, had raised concerns about the family but the case was closed three months before the fire.
Cross-examining Singh, 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 there later on the same day as her last visit in July 2021. Previously a health visitor had raised concerns about the family but they were not followed up after she retired, jurors were told.
The children had not attended school for three weeks before their deaths.
Rose, of Wallington, south London, attended much of the trial by video link from home on medical advice and declined to give evidence in her defence.
The court heard there was evidence suggesting she was probably depressed and may have a personality disorder, but the prosecution asserted that was not a defence.
