Woman tells trial of going ‘up in flames’

A WOMAN has recounted through tears the night her body was engulfed in flames in her then-boyfriend’s shed.

A jury watched a prerecorded interview of the woman in the Supreme Court of Tasmania on Thursday at the trial of her ex-boyfriend, who is fighting an attempted murder charge. When asked if her ex had ever threatened to kill her during their relationship, the woman began to cry.

“He had threatened to throw me into a farm of pigs,” she claimed in the interview.

“On the second occasion he said that he would hang me but make it look like a suicide.

“He would get me to write a letter beforehand, a suicide letter, and play music and set photos up around me.”

After finishing her night shift on the morning of April 24, 2017, the couple met to talk. The woman claimed she had wanted to end the relationship and he had tried to talk her out of it. That night, the pair headed to the man’s father’s shed on a property in Chigwell.

The woman claimed he locked the door and the pair were hitting each other.

“I turned my back to (him) and I felt a splash,” she said.

“I knew it was petrol because of the smell. He was saying to go inside and get cleaned up … I just agreed with him to go inside his house and get changed because I just needed the petrol off of me.

“I had gone to walk outside the garage towards the door and when I was getting closer to (him) all I remember was the lighter being flicked by him.”

The woman cried as she recalled the horror of having “gone up in flames”.

“I just remember thinking that (he) couldn’t get the door open and I thought we were both going to die in the garage and it was going to explode.”

But the pair escaped the shed. The woman claimed she had asked him to hose her down, which he did.

She alleged he told her he was “going to go to jail for a very, very long time” if she didn’t say what happened was an accident.

She was rushed to hospital and put in an induced coma, regaining consciousness about two months later in The Alfred hospital, Melbourne.

The woman weighed just over 37kg and had burns everywhere except her feet, her right hand, right forearm and some of her face. She remained at the hospital for three months before spending two months at Caulfield Rehabilitation.

A recorded phone call was played where the man told her he loved her and said “you’re the one that flicked the lighter – do you not remember?”.

The trial will continue on Friday. Earlier in the trial, defence lawyer Greg Richardson told the jury the incident was the result of a “highly emotionally disturbed young woman who was making suicide threats that went wrong”.