Petrol-doused girl watched helplessly as ex ‘killed sister and children in revenge fireplace’
Sharaz Ali, 40 and Calum Sunderland, 26, are accused of murdering Bryonie Gawith, 29, Denisty Birtle, nine, Oscar Birtle, five, and 22-month-old Aubree Birtle and attempting to murder Antonia Gawith
A woman broke down in tears as she described how she “couldn’t save” her sister and three children from a “catastrophic” house blaze allegedly started by her ex-partner.
Prosecutors claim Sharaz Ali was “motivated by jealousy and fuelled by drink and drugs” when he torched the home of Bryonie Gawith and her three young children in the early hours of August 21 last year, resulting in all four deaths.
Ali stands accused of targeting the property to “take revenge” on his former girlfriend – Bryonie’s sister Antonia Gawith – who was staying there following the end of their “abusive” seven-year relationship earlier that month.
Today (November 20), jurors at Doncaster Crown Court watched Antonia’s video statement to police, in which she wept whilst recounting her desperate attempts to rescue her sister, nieces and nephew as the property became consumed by flames with them trapped inside.
She explained she had been in Bryonie’s bedroom after completing her Tesco shift when Ali began sending messages, alleging she was with another man. Antonia said her sister advised her to ignore him before beginning to drift off to sleep.
“I never thought he’d come and do that. Why would he do that?” she asked officers. Antonia said she heard the property’s ring doorbell sound and began making her way downstairs.
“I started walking downstairs and the door was kicked through and Sharaz and another man were stood there, but the man that kicked the door ran straight off,” she told police. “(Ali) started pouring petrol on me. I was saying ‘please don’t, I love you, I’ll come back, don’t do this’.”
She informed the police: “I was begging, I would say anything just so he wouldn’t do it.” She described Ali as appearing “angry” and shouting, but she couldn’t recall his exact words, adding: “He just seemed so different … he just didn’t seem himself at all, it was just crazy.”
Antonia recalled her desperate attempts to wrestle the petrol and lighter from Ali’s grasp before fleeing the house, hoping he would chase after her.
“I was screaming for help but he didn’t follow me. I ran back to the house and as I ran back my sister’s kicked him down the stairs and then I tried to get him out.
“I pulled the petrol off him and tried to get him out, and then he hit the lighter. I seen him set on fire, and all the stairs, and my sister.”
Antonia recalled how the front door suddenly swung shut, and when she managed to pry it open, there was “fire everywhere”.
“I was scared to go in because I thought I would just burn,” she admitted.
Antonia told the police that she dashed around to the back door, but it was stuck, and she began kicking it while “screaming and shouting” for her sister to escape. She said Bryonie, who had dialled 999 while coming down the stairs, hurled her phone out of the window.
She informed the officers that she picked up the phone and started “shouting down the phone telling them to send everybody – the police, ambulance, fire brigade”.
“I was just screaming, trying to get back in the house and I couldn’t get in. I couldn’t save them,” she sobbed.
Antonia told officers how police arrived and broke down the door, managing to pull Ali out, but by the time the fire brigade got there, it was tragically too late for Bryonie and the children.
She spoke of her desperate attempts to reach the upstairs but was held back as she was still drenched in petrol.
“They said it wasn’t safe. I was just begging them all and screaming and crying, and I just wanted to save them and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything.
“They wouldn’t let me go up – I just wanted to be with her. I was covered in petrol, so they were trying to keep me back.”
Antonia said Ali was “quite controlling” and violent during their relationship, and that her sister was the one person she could talk to after losing many of her friends.
She said: “He used to go out on benders and get drunk and not come home, I was scared to leave him.
“I was just so scared of him. I don’t know why I stayed with him. He promised me he’d stop drinking and wouldn’t take drugs but he was coming back most days drunk and on drugs.”
She said Bryonie gave her the strength to end the relationship with Ali when the two sisters were on holiday, weeks before the fire.
Antonia told police: “I felt like I had the confidence and the support to finally leave him.
“The other day I said ‘Should I just go back?’ and she (Bryonie) said: ‘Don’t be stupid, you’re finally free of him’.”
Bryonie, 29, and her children Denisty Birtle, nine, Oscar Birtle, five, and 22-month-old Aubree Birtle, perished in the fire.
Ali, 40, of no fixed address, and Calum Sunderland, 26, of Calton Street, Keighley, are accused of murdering Bryonie and the three children, and attempting to murder Antonia.
Mohammed Shabir, 45, who was scheduled to face trial alongside them, suffered a fatal heart attack last month after collapsing in prison.
Prosecutors allege that Shabir drove to and from the house while Sunderland forced the door open.
Both Ali and Sunderland plead not guilty to the charges and the trial is ongoing.
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