A woman has been convicted of manslaughter over the deaths of her four young children in a house fire in London.
Deveca Rose, 30, appeared in court on Thursday, Oct. 3, after leaving her two sets of twin boys locked up at home while she went out shopping on Dec. 16, 2021. The boys were then trapped in a fire at the house in the Sutton area of south London, and died, the Metropolitan Police stated in a news release.
Rose had been charged with four counts of manslaughter and child abandonment on Nov. 9, 2023. She was convicted of manslaughter on Oct. 3, according to the release, but not found guilty of the second charge.
Twins brothers Leyton and Logan Hoath, 3, and Kyson and Bryson Hoath, 4, were found home alone and “unconscious” in an upstairs bedroom by firefighters. The children were taken to hospital where they were pronounced dead.
According to the release, a passer-by noticed the house on fire shortly after 7:00 p.m. and alerted a neighbor, who “kicked in the front door in an attempt to reach the children,” but couldn’t enter as the fire consumed the property.
The fire is believed to have “started in the living room on the ground floor either by a candle/tealight or a burning cigarette” and spread quickly “due to the floor being strewn with discarded items and rubbish,” police said in the release, adding that the house conditions were “unsanitary.”
The children “fled to an upstairs bedroom where they would be overcome by smoke” as the fire broke out, per the release from authorities. Post-mortem examinations confirmed that the boys died from the inhalation of fire fumes.
The BBC reported that the time that the four children had run to the upper floor of the house to cry for help, but had not been able to escape the property.
According to the Oct, 3 statement from police, Rose claimed on the night of the incident that a woman named Jade she met “a few days before” was supposed to be supervising the children, though she was not found in the area and hasn’t been traced by authorities since.
“Hours of CCTV was viewed by officers who could find no trace of her having met with Jade — when this was put to her, Rose claimed that she had met her on a minor road with no CCTV,” police said, per the release.
Roses’ four twin boys were killed in a house fire in South London in December 2021.
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Call data on the mother’s mobile phone “showed no contact details” of the woman ‘Jade.’ On the night of the incident, Rose also attempted to call ‘Jade’ in front of police using a phone number “notably similar to her own,” per the release.
In CCTV footage obtained by police, Rose had also left her house alone the day before the incident.
Rose said in a statement in December 2021 that she would “never get over” the loss of her sons, per U.K. newspaper The Times.
According to an Oct. 3 report from The Times, the Old Bailey had previously been told that five months before the fire social workers had determined the family needed assistance, but after Rose “refused to engage,” the case was closed.
The boys’ family said in a statement on Oct. 3: “Bryson, Kyson, Leyton and Logan Hoath were cruelly taken from us in a senseless act of negligence. The impact this has had on us, their father Dalton, and our family cannot be overstated.”
“The last three years have been a nightmare,” they described, adding that the family “will now take time to heal” and that “justice is done.”
“This has been a difficult investigation for everyone involved,” Detective Chief Inspector Samantha Townsend of the Met’s Specialist Crime Command said in a statement on Oct. 3. “Deveca Rose was the very person who should have protected and nurtured the four boys, but instead, put her own self-interest above their safety.”
“Had she been in the house when the fire started she may have been able to put it out, or at the very least get the children to safety,” DCI Townsend added.
She continued, “In the face of her neglect, instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she invented a story that involved a baby sitter whose very existence could not be confirmed.”
DCI Townsend described “the sadness at the needless loss of four young lives,” as “beyond our comprehension.”
“I cannot begin to imagine the devastation felt by the children’s family and loved ones,” she said, adding that authorities’ “thoughts are very much with them all today.”
Rose was released on bail on Oct. 3 and will appear again in court on Friday, Nov. 15 for sentencing.
