‘He threatened to light me on fire’: Father was ‘abusive’ before house fire that killed boy

The mother of a boy who was killed in a house fire that also significantly burnt his little brother has told a court their father had previously threatened to set her alight when she tried to leave him.

A coronial inquest is under way to probe how the boy died from significant burns following the blaze in 2017.

Officers had attended the rural property during the blaze, seeing the two burnt children crying on the couch, and found the father nearby in another home having a shower while holding a cigarette and not answering questions.

The family cannot be identified for legal reasons.

The boys’ mother gave evidence to the inquest on Thursday, breaking down in tears as she recalled being with her mother and family in another town, when her mother received a call about the fire.

“Mum told me the boys were in the fire, and they were in a bad way,” she said.

When she arrived at the hospital and in the days after, she said the father gave inconsistent stories about where the fire started, and whether he was in the home or his parent’s house on the same property.

“To this day he won’t tell me what caused the fire,” the woman had told police in her statements.

She told the court her relationship with the father had been on-and-off, and she had tried to leave with the boys multiple times because he was violent.

In one incident, when the older boy stepped in to protect her, the father threw him into a gas bottle, splitting his eyebrow open, she said.

She recalled the father telling her that the night before the fire, he removed his guns from his property, and emptied the water from the above ground pool outside.

In one incident when she tried to leave the relationship, she says the father threatened to kill her. “I was laying on the lounge, and he threatened to kill me and light me on fire,” she said.

She claimed the father had told her on multiple occasions when she had left the relationship that he had burnt her belongings.

She told the court she feared for her and her boys’ lives, and claimed the father had also sexually assaulted her.

The inquest has heard the father claimed the mother was responsible for the fire, but police had determined she was in another area.

Detective Sergeant Julie Castle gave evidence earlier on Thursday about police interviews with the surviving boy after the fire.

The inquest heard the boy had told police in the months after about the fire: “It looked like a monster, it was a scary night.”

He also claimed his father lit the blaze, saying: “He was making a fire with his lighter.” The court heard the boy also said he got in trouble with his father because he was not allowed to speak about the fire.

In a phone call with someone who was in prison, police heard the father saying the mother “was not at all part of this” before going on to say “but at the end of the day, the police will work it all out”.

Castle said in some calls to the prisoner, the father could be heard yelling and swearing at the boys, which indicated their home life.

“He’s yelling quite aggressively at them,” she said.

The court heard the triple-0 calls from the property on that night from the boy’s grandmother. She can be heard distressed, telling the operator her son was asleep, and the house had gone up in flames with the two boys inside.

In a second call to emergency services, the grandmother said: “My son and two grandsons have just got out of the fire, and they’re badly burnt.” When asked about the extent of the burns, the grandmother replied that they were “really bad”, and that their clothes were burnt.

Detective Sergeant Craig Ellis told the court the father had claimed during an interview that he rescued the younger boy from their burning bedroom, before throwing a bucket of water over him and telling him to run to the grandparents home.

Ellis said the father then claimed he went back in for the older boy and also poured water on him.

“Then he says to me, which I thought was odd, ‘I don’t know why, but then I went for a run around the house’,” Ellis told the court.

On Wednesday, the inquest heard the surviving boy had made multiple disclosures over the years to Child Safety staff, including: “My dad burnt me in the fire”, “it was my idiot dad, he tried to kill me and [the brother]” and saying that his father should be in jail.

In another incident, the boy said his brother was “burnt from the inside out” and claimed his older sibling saved him: “He laid on top of me.”