Mother is jailed for 10 years after leaving 4 sons to die in horror home hearth surrounded by excrement and garbage whereas she went purchasing
A mother who left her four sons to die in a burning room full of rubbish and excrement while she went out to Sainsbury’s has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Deveca Rose left her two sets of twins 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 in the dock of Court One as she was sentenced to 10 years in prison by Judge Mark Lucraft KC.
The judge said: ‘There are no words to describe this case other than a deeply tragic one,’ before adding: ‘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.’
Earlier, the boys’ father Dalton Hoath said losing his four sons – Leyton and Logan, aged three and four-year-olds Kyson and Bryson – was ‘the worst day of my life’.
In a statement read by a relative on his behalf, he 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. 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.’
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
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.
The judge noted that Rose had already been to Sainsbury’s earlier that day and her return trip at the time of the fire was not to purchase any items that were ‘essential or vital’.
He told Rose: ‘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.’
After the sentence was announced, one woman stormed out of the courtroom and was heard crying as she was led away, Sky report.
The judge described the victims as lively and engaging children who were ‘deeply loved’ by all who had a role in their care.
Rose, who was found guilty of four counts of manslaughter following a trial last autumn, turned away and concealed her face in a mask and padded hood as she sat in the dock of Court One at the Old Bailey.
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
The court previously heard how the 30-year-old defendant had split up with her partner and suffered from mental health problems.
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?’
Rose, pictured outside the Old Bailey, was found guilty following a trial at the Old Bailey
She told the court her great grandchildren were her ‘whole world’, adding: ‘The horror, the pain remains with me three years on.’
The boys’ father Dalton Hoath said that losing his four sons was ‘the worst day of my life’, saying: ‘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.’
In his statement, read in court by a relative, he 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.
He added: ‘I have tried to be some sort of normal for my own family now…
‘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.’
Mr Hoath told how he was now learning to treasure every moment with the knowledge that ‘tragedies happen’.
The judge accepted Rose was the person in the dock and that there was a medical reason for her not showing her face.
