A WOMBWELL teenager told school friends he was going to burn his house down the day before his older brother was killed and five other members of his family were injured in a fire, a court was told.
Yesterday Sheffield Crown Court heard evidence from a 15-year-old boy via video link.
He was a friend of the defendant and said: “First he said he was going to burn the school down, then he said he was going to burn his house down.
“He had a grin on his face but his eyes looked serious. I thought he was just joking about.”
The 14-year-old defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is charged with murder and arson with intent to endanger life following a fire at his family home on November 3. His 15-year-old brother died in the blaze and five other family members had to jump from upstairs windows to escape. They were all injured.
On Tuesday the defendant's mother recalled in court that when she told her son he could not go and live with a friend, he replied “I’ll get a gun and shoot you” but she did not take it seriously.
Rodney Jameson QC, prosecuting, said there were incidents following his being ‘grounded’ for stealing £5,000 from his older brother that flared into hatred of his family and particularly his mother. The older brother had threatened to sell his X-Box computer games console to recover some of the money.
Mr Jameson gave an outline of what his defence is expected to be. He is likely to say a drug dealer he owed money to started the fire.
The boy initially said when interviewed by police, that he went out early on the morning of the fire and helped a friend complete a paper round.
He stuck to this story in 12 interviews in the four days after the fire. But Mr Jameson said the boy now accepts his account was untrue and says he lied to the police in panic.
The youth now says he went out early to steal money from his older brother to pay a debt to a dealer, and it may have been the drug dealer who set the house on fire fire.
The boy’s mother, still suffering from her injuries, sat down in the witness box to give evidence.
She said there had been no smoke alarms in the house at the time of the fire. One had been taken down during decorating but she did not know why another smoke alarm had not been there.
On the night before the fire she had been decorating her own bedroom. When the defendant was questioned by police after the fire about traces of white spirit on his trainers, he claimed to have been helping with this decorating and the white spirit came from cleaning the bushes.
But in court, his mother explained she had not used any white spirit. She said the paint brushes were reduced to 50p for a pack of five and were not worth cleaning. The case continues and is expected to last six weeks.
