Mother due to be sentenced over the deaths of her four sons in fire
Deveca Rose’s four children died in a fire after she left them alone to go to the shops.
A woman whose four young boys died in a fire after she left them home alone to go to Sainsbury’s will be sentenced later.
Deveca Rose had left her two sets of twins in the locked terraced house 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.
On Friday, Rose, who was on bail throughout her trial, will return to court to be sentenced by Judge Mark Lucraft KC.
Rose and the children had been living in squalor, surrounded by rubbish and human excrement, before the tragedy.
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.”
Rose had gone to the supermarket, leaving Leyton and Logan Hoath, aged three; and four-year-olds Kyson and Bryson Hoath at the rented home in Sutton, south-west London.
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 to break down the front door before firefighters in breathing apparatus went in and found the children’s bodies under beds.
They were rushed to two separate hospitals but attempts to save them failed and they died from inhalation of fumes later that night.
Rose arrived home while firefighters were still tackling the blaze and she was taken in by a neighbour.
She had claimed she 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.
The children’s father, Dalton Hoath, said in a statement that she had left them alone once or twice to go to the nearby shop before.
Mr Hoath, who had split up with the defendant, added that he was “devastated” and his world had been turned “upside down” by the loss of his “young, boisterous lads”.
Paternal great-grandmother Sally Johnson said: “I was aware that she would leave the boys by themselves in the house. When I asked her about this, she would say, ‘Oh no, I just went to the pop shop’ which is a local shop just seven houses away.
“I do not know how often this happened but I remember several times I phoned the house and Kyson answered the phone and told me, ‘mummy has gone to the pop shop’.”
Paternal step-grandmother Kerrie Hoath described the boys as “polite, carefree and very much loved” but recalled Rose not allowing her into the house.
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 raised concerns about the family but they were not followed up after she retired, jurors were told.
The children had not attended school for three weeks before their deaths.
Rose, of Wallington, south London, 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.
