A mother was sentenced to 10 years in prison for leaving her four sons in a burning room full of rubbish and excrement while she went out to Sainsbury’s ‘laughing and joking’ with a friend.
Deveca Rose left her two sets of twins – Kyson and Bryson, aged four, and Leyton and Logan, aged three – in the locked terraced house in Sutton, south London, when the fatal blaze broke out on the evening of December 16 2021.
The 30-year-old defendant, who had split up with her partner and suffered from mental health problems, was found guilty of four counts of manslaughter following an Old Bailey trial last autumn.
Today, Rose, who was on bail throughout her trial, sobbed with her head covered as she was sentenced to 10 years in prison by Judge Mark Lucraft KC.
The judge said:Â ‘There are no words to describe this case other than a deeply tragic one… The last moments of their young lives would have been with acute physical suffering as the fire took hold and they sought to get away from it.’
Rose and the children had been living in squalor surrounded by rubbish and human excrement smeared on the walls before the tragedy. The children had also not been to school for three months.
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 breaking down the front door before firefighters in breathing apparatus went in and found the children’s bodies under beds.
In a statement read by a relative on his behalf, the boys’ father Dalton Hoath said: ‘Their lives had just begun but were cut so short. It was every parent’s worst nightmare. I’m not a great talker but even if I was I could not put it in words. I simply want to join them.Â
Deveca Ros left her two sets of twins in the locked terraced house when the fatal blaze broke out on the evening of December 16 2021
Kyson and Bryson Hoath, aged four, died alongside their brothers, Leyton and Logan Hoath, aged three, at their home in Sutton, south London, in December 2021
Firefighters carried the four boys from the burning building but they were all declared dead a short time later
The 30-year-old defendant, who had split up with her partner and suffered from mental health problems, was found guilty of four counts of manslaughter last autumn
‘I will never recover from losing my funny, beautiful boys. I have to fight for all of us left behind and live with this massive pain in my heart before I meet them again.’Â
After describing it as the ‘worst day of his life’ he also told how he cried or stayed in bed and came close to jumping off a bridge ‘many times’ in the days after losing his sons.
Judge Lucraft KC said the victims were left alone by their mother in an ‘unsafe’ house when a fire broke out, likely caused by a tea light.
He said Rose was ‘laughing and joking’ with a friend while she was out shopping and ‘seemed fine’.Â
He told Rose: ‘You purchased a few items – none could be said to be essential or vital. Had you been at home you may have been able to extinguish the fire or if not you would have been able to get them out of the house.
‘You were not there and the children were too young to know what to do. As a result of what you did, they were all killed.’
He continued: ‘The last moments of their young lives would have been with acute physical suffering as the fire took hold and they sought to get away from it.
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.’Â
Rose had gone to the supermarket, leaving the boys at the rented home in Sutton, south-west London.
She later arrived home while firefighters were still tackling the blaze and was taken in by a neighbour.Â
The boys were rushed to two separate hospitals, but attempts to save them failed and they died from inhalation of fumes later that night.Â
Mr Justice Lucraft during the sentencing of Deveca Rose, 30, at the Old Bailey in London
Darren Woodhams, a fire investigator for the London Fire Brigade, found the fire started from a either a discarded cigarette or an upturned tea light, which set fire to rubbish on the floor and then a sofa in the living room
Rose 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.
Jurors were told that social worker Georgia Singh had raised concerns about the family, but the case was closed three months before the fire.
Previously, a health visitor had also expressed worries, but they were not followed up after she retired, jurors were told.
The children had also not attended school for three weeks before their deaths.
Rose 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 suffered from a personality disorder, but the prosecution asserted that was not a defence.
In mitigation, her barrister Laurie-Anne Power KC highlighted that Rose had struggled with ‘complex psychiatric mental health needs’.
Rose, pictured outside the Old Bailey, was found guilty following a trial at the Old BaileyÂ
Deveca Rose (right) leaves Bromley Magistrates’ Court, south London, where she was charged with four counts of manslaughter
She told the court: ‘There is nothing I can say to mitigate the loss to the Hoath and Rose family.
‘Even though she is criminally responsible for the deaths of those children, she has suffered the greatest loss of all.’
After the sentence was announced, one woman stormed out of the courtroom and was heard crying as she was led away, Sky report.Â
The judge described the victims as lively and engaging children who were ‘deeply loved’ by all who had a role in their care.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, the victims’ grandfather Jason Hoath said: ‘It is nearly three years since we lost our wonderful fun-loving grandsons at the tender age of three and four.
‘The pain from this loss has shattered my life in every possible way.’
He said it was ‘too painful to describe’ seeing them trapped in an inferno and ‘devastating’ when the boys died later in hospital after ‘fighting so bravely’.
The boys’ aunt Casey Hoath read her statement in court and described her nephews as ‘funny’ and ‘full of character’.
‘This was my worst nightmare scenario with the people I love at the centre,’ she said.
In a victim impact statement, great grandmother Sally Johnson quoted her great grandson’s ‘favourite word – why’ as she told of her heartbreak at losing them.
Crying, she said: ‘The thought of them crying and screaming out will haunt me forever. My only comfort is they are now together forever and need never be alone again.
‘I’m afraid I will never be able to forgive… I would like to say their favourite word – why? Just why?’
She told the court her great grandchildren were her ‘whole world’, adding: ‘The horror, the pain remains with me three years on.’
The judge accepted Rose was the person in the dock and that there was a medical reason for her not showing her face.Â
