A “jealous and possessive” taxi driver set fire to his pregnant girlfriend’s home, killing her, her partially-disabled sister and their mother, a court heard yesterday.
Azhar Ali Mehmood, 26, then claimed he had escaped from the house with the couple’s then 16-month-old daughter, Tazneem, Stafford Crown Court was told.
Lucy Lowe, 16, Sarah Lowe, 17, and 49-year-old Eileen Linda Lowe all died in the fire in Leegomery, Telford, Shropshire, in the early hours of August 5 last year.
George Lowe, the teenagers’ 56-year-old father and Mrs Lowe’s husband, escaped via a bedroom window but was unable to save his family and their pet Yorkshire Terrier.
Adrian Redgrave QC, prosecuting, said in his opening speech to the jury that investigations into the blaze showed it was started deliberately.
Traces of petrol were discovered in the living room and kitchen which made the fire take hold quickly, trapping the girls and their mother upstairs.
Splashes were also found on Mr Lowe’s socks.
Mehmood, formerly of Manor Road, Hadley, Telford, claimed to police that he had been at the house for about an hour before the fire started just after 3.30am.
He said he had been awoken by a smoke alarm and clambered out of the rear window and dropped on to the rear garden patio below.
After escaping, he said he dialled 999 immediately and shouted at Lucy and the two others upstairs to get out. Baby Tazneem was already on the patio wrapped in blankets.
But Mr Redgrave said Mehmood, who denies three counts of murder and one of attempted murder, had given a “false picture” of events that night.
He and Lucy had a stormy relationship and argued frequently, sometimes about her relationships with other men during a time when they had split up, said the lawyer.
“There had also been occasions when he had been, in one way or another, humiliated, in front of others by things that Lucy had said or done,” he continued.
“He was jealous and possessive. A factor in this case is also that at the time of her death, Lucy was once again pregnant.”
Mr Redgrave said video camera stills from a petrol station about four minutes away from the house in Halifax Drive showed Mehmood’s black taxi on the forecourt at 3.28am.
Timings from the emergency services also revealed that a neighbour called the fire brigade first at 3.39am and she claimed she saw Mehmood standing outside the property at that time. It’s clear, we submit, that this was a deliberate fire, murder for those who were killed.
Mr Redgrave said: “It is...absurd to imagine that in five or six minutes between his entering the house and the fire taking hold that some unknown intruder should have somehow entered.”
The hearing was adjourned until today.