Mother goes shopping – children suffocate in fire at home

A mother is charged with quadruple manslaughter and child abuse. The victims are her own two sets of twins.

Four children died in a fire in the south of London (England). The boys were found completely dead surrounded by rubbish and human excrement, the BBC reported. Now the children's mother is on trial for manslaughter: 29-year-old Deveca R. left the two sets of twins alone at home in December 2021 to go shopping in a supermarket.

While they were away, a discarded cigarette or tea light is said to have started the fire in their terraced house, writes “The Independent”. The little boys then ran up the stairs and screamed for help because they could not escape from the locked house. When the twins Leyton and Logan (3) and the twins Kyson and Bryson Hoath (4) hid from the fire under a bed, they died there – surrounded by rubbish.

The neighbors alerted the fire department. Several emergency workers wearing protective clothing and breathing apparatus put out the fire. When they entered the house, they found the four children under a bed on the upper floor. They were conscious of this and their bodies were limp. Outside, paramedics tried to save the children and took them to a hospital. There, they were only pronounced dead. The cause of death was later given as inhalation of fire gases.

Deveca R. was arrested after she returned from the supermarket. At first she claimed that she had left her children in the care of a friend while she was away. Although the police followed up on all of R.'s leads, they could not find any trace of the alleged friend.

The 29-year-old is now on trial for four counts of death and child abuse. The prosecutor in charge said: “The public prosecutor is of the opinion that Mrs R. left her children unattended when she went to a Sainsbury's supermarket that evening.” Before the mother of four left the house, she “either dropped a lit cigarette or left tea lights burning, or both,” the prosecutor suspected. A fire then broke out on or under the sofa, which quickly spread through the house due to the amount of rubbish.

“We believe the children were trapped in the house and could not escape. They ran upstairs to escape the fire and shouted to the neighbors. But it was too late to do anything,” the prosecutor added.

The jury was told that although the defendants had ensured that the children were well-bred, they had lived in “very poor conditions” and R. had turned down offers of help from family and social services. In addition, the house was in a littered state. The bathroom and toilet were also full of rubbish and garbage and could not be used. Buckets and pots had to be used as toilets instead.

The evidence suggests that the mother is probably depressed and may be suffering from a personality disorder, it was said on the first day of the trial on Monday. The single mother has separated from the father of her sons, Dalton Hoath.

The court was also told that social services were aware of the family's difficulties. The agency was called in in July 2021 after inappropriate behavior by the boys at school was raised. During a home visit to the family, a social worker also found garbage lying around the house, giving off a “very strong, unpleasant smell.” Despite this, the fall was closed in September 2021 – three months before the children died. It was also not restarted when the children had been out of school for three weeks before the fire on December 16, 2021.