Murder-trial witness tells of barbell, knife and blaze

Andrew Colgan who lived in a flat above Peter Brown in Buckrose Court, Norton, told Leeds Crown Court yesterday he heard the door of the flat below opening and closing early hours on September 5 last year.

Three or four minutes later he heard the fire alarms going off.

He also heard some banging from below like "beating at a door" and went out on to the landing to see what was happening.

He told the jury he looked down to see what was going on and saw Peter Brown, who had a weightlifting bar in his hand, hitting his own door.

"He was banging it off the door jamb, at waist height banging it against the door," he said.

Mr Colgan said he reached up to take the battery out the fire alarm which continued to ring, and at the same time asked Brown what he was doing.

"When I looked down again he had a knife in his hand. He said 'I'll tell you what I'm doing' and moved towards the stairs. That's when I went back inside again."

Mr Colgan said he was concerned at seeing him with a knife because he had his young son in the flat at the time and locked the door. The knife had a 10in blade and a burgundy wine handle.

He said Brown seemed agitated. "As though he had a fall-out with himself, when he was banging the barbell he was muttering to himself, like he had had a fall-out with somebody."

Back inside his flat he heard some banging on his door and also the sound of a woman screaming hysterically.

"As soon as the screaming started the banging stopped and I heard thudding as though somebody was going back downstairs."

He looked out of his bedroom window and realised the girl screaming was in an adjacent flat. She was giving directions on the phone and asked for the fire brigade to come.

He then looked across and saw smoke billowing over the top of the door frame at the entrance to the adjoining flats and rushed to get his son outside.

He shouted to another neighbour to look after his son while he got clothes for them both and saw a neighbour, Liam Foley, persuading his girlfriend, Lizzie Murphy, to climb down a drainpipe from their first floor flat.

He then saw Brown trying to kick in the door to the flats but the heat was too intense for him to go in.

The fire claimed the lives of Jamie Kyne, 18, from Co Galway, and Jan Watson, 19, from Forfar, Scotland, in a second floor flat.

The prosecution claim drunken Brown deliberately started a fire in revenge after being refused entry to a party.

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

Under cross-examination by Paul Watson QC, defending Brown, Mr Colgan denied he was mistaken about seeing him with a knife that night.

Earlier, another neighbour, Martin Brown, no relation, said he also saw Peter Brown trying to get into the block. Later he saw him running up and down screaming and shouting and he seemed angry.

The trial continues.