Father of boy killed in house fire lashes out in angry court tirade

The father of a Queensland boy who died after suffering horrific burns in a house fire has lashed out in an angry tirade, yelling at Coroners Court staff “who the f— are you to be asking these questions?”

A coronial inquest is looking into the boy’s death from extensive burns after the blaze in 2017, which also significantly injured his younger brother.

Police found both burnt children crying on a couch, while the father was discovered nearby in another home having a shower while holding a cigarette, the inquest has heard.

The family cannot be identified for legal reasons.

The boy’s father gave evidence on Tuesday, at times yelling at counsel assisting the coroner, Kate Juhasz, to “stop asking me stupid f–king questions you already know the answer to”, and “please ask the questions without the bullshit”.

On the night of the fire, the father recalled that it was the “one day” the boys were behaving.

“They were too exhausted to fight me,” he said, confirming they went to bed early.

He told the court that when he woke up, he did not know at first there was a fire, describing a glow in the kids’ room and a flickering light.

“I burst into the room to see what was going on, to see why the kids were up,” he said.

The father said he saw a fire in the room and told the boys to get up.

“This is where it all confuses the f— out of me. I ripped that door open … it f—ing exploded,” he said, saying the room was quickly engulfed in flames.

The father told the inquest he saw a fireball explode above his children.

During this evidence, he had another outburst, asking Juhasz: “Who the f— are you to be asking these questions?”

He later told Juhasz that under his shirt, he lived with the scars of what happened that night.

Earlier in his evidence, the father denied he was an alcoholic. He disagreed with the mother’s claims that she was assaulted during their relationship and had burnt her belongings four times.

When questioned about his relationship with the mother, the father told Juhasz that she was making him uncomfortable. He followed by asking if she had “done your homework”.

The court was played audio from phone calls to his new partner in which the father could be heard yelling at the boys, telling them to “shut the f— up, I’m on the phone”.

After questions about his relationship with his children, the father told Juhasz, “obviously, you don’t have kids”.

“Is there a relevance to all this, or are we just here kicking tyres to waste time?” he asked.

The father became increasingly agitated during questioning, asking Juhasz about her bodily functions and her underwear.

Coroner Megan Fairweather interjected throughout, reminding the father to listen to the questions.

The father began his evidence by asking where he was supposed to sit. He was unable to say his exact age: “42, 43, I don’t know, f—ing old.”

When questioning began, he told Juhasz: “I just spent thousands of dollars having these memories erased. I have spent thousands of dollars in psychologists and hypnosis to have these memories erased.” 

The inquest earlier heard that in an interview with police, the father claimed he retrieved the boys from the blaze and then “went for a run around the house”, but did not know why.

The boys’ grandparents gave evidence on Tuesday, claiming they heard a loud bang that evening while they were watching television.

The grandmother told the court she went inside her property, a couple of hundred metres away from the boys’ home, about 7.20pm.

She said her son came screaming up the pathway to their house, telling the grandfather to get the boys, that the house was on fire, and for her to call Triple Zero.

She recalled the eldest boy walking beside his father, and the youngest in the father’s arm.

“They’re walking independently, but they’re screaming, yelling, and crying uncontrollably,” she said, adding the boys had “blisters on blisters”.

The grandmother said the oldest boy was sobbing, “but then he never made a noise after”.

She said she made several calls to Triple Zero to get help from paramedics after realising firefighters were not needed because the house was gone.

The grandmother disputed a suggestion from Juhasz that she told a student paramedic that she had to encourage her son to go back to the house to get the boys.

The inquest earlier heard that the surviving boy had made multiple disclosures after the fire, including “my dad burnt me in the fire” and “it was my idiot dad, he tried to kill me and [my brother]”.

He said he had blown a candle three times and “started a big fire”, and that he felt guilty about his brother dying, describing him as a “black and purple butterfly now”.

The boys’ mother last week told the inquest their father had previously threatened to set her alight when she tried to leave him.

She also said that to this day, the father would not tell her what caused the fire, and that he had given inconsistent stories about how the blaze started.

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