Death-fire defendant decides against giving evidence

The prosecution claim a drunken Peter Brown, 37, started the blaze deliberately in Buckrose Court, Norton, in the early hours of September 5 last year after being refused entry to a party in one of the flats.

The fire claimed the lives of Jamie Kyne, 18, from Co Galway and Jan Wilson, 19, from Forfar, Scotland, who were trapped on the second floor.

Brown, 37, denies the murders of Mr Kyne and Miss Wilson, alternative charges of manslaughter and arson with intent to endanger life.

Paul Watson QC, defending Brown, told the jury after the close of the prosecution case yesterday at Leeds Crown Court he would not be calling his client to give evidence.

The judge, Mrs Justice Nicola Davies asked him if he had advised Brown "that the stage has now been reached at which he may give evidence and, if he chooses not to do so or, having been sworn, without good cause refuses to answer any question, the jury may draw such inferences as appear proper?" Mr Watson said Brown had been so advised.

Philip Reed, a fire investigation consultant called by the defence, said he believed the seat of the fire was to the right of the stairs, "three to four steps" into the entrance foyer.

Because of the "geometry of the stairwell enclosure" there would be a chimney effect in the gap up the staircase.

"The flames will rise in a plume unless something is there to stop it like a ceiling," he told the court. "Fire in the ground floor will rise through this opening to the top floor totally disregarding the intermediate floor, it will then mushroom across the ceiling and then come down, the heat and flames will set fire to anything there at the top level."

He said he could not rule out that the blaze began as a smouldering fire and turned later into a free flaming one.

Mr Watson said the defence could not make a positive assertion that a fire had smouldered because of a discarded cigarette, for example, but he asked Mr Reed if it was possible to tell how long a fire could smoulder.

The witness told the jury without knowing what had fuelled the fire in terms of materials and the configuration of how they had been stacked it was not possible to estimate that.

He had heard an example of a grain silo smouldering for two days.

The trial continues.