Stored material 'aided spread of jockey death fire'

Forensic scientist Jeffrey Gray told Leeds Crown Court items such as chairs and tins of paint "would contribute greatly to a fire once one started" and amounted to a "substantial fire load".

In addition, the style of wooden dog-leg staircase installed in the block at Buckrose Court in Norton, would have drawn the hot vapours up from a ground floor fire to the floors above.

He told the court: "I was surprised because I didn't expect stairs such as these to be incorporated in a two-storey building where there wasn't a fire escape."

Mr Gray said from the wreckage of the entrance way to the flats he had smelled no accelerants but when a piece of cardboard packaging from flatback furniture was found among the debris a test revealed white spirit.

Peter Brown, 37, denies the murders of Jamie Kyne, 18, from Co Galway, and Jan Wilson, 19, from Forfar, Scotland who died in a second-floor flat on September 5 last year. He also denies alternative charges of manslaughter and arson intending to endanger life.

The trial continues.