Jailed for locking man in house fire

Just after she set fire to the house she and her friend lived in, Colleen Daniels locked the main door and put the key in her pocket.

But as the flames took hold of the home in Orchard East Road, Ngatea, and her victim began desperately looking for a way out, she changed her mind and unlocked the door - allowing them both to escape being burned alive.

Colleen Kathleen Daniels, 54, was jailed for three years and four months when she appeared in the High Court in Hamilton on Wednesday on a single charge of endangering life by arson.

It was the end of a lengthy journey through the courts for the Whakatane-born woman - a journey protracted by numerous psychological assessments and reports on her state of mind, both on the day she set the house alight and in the time since.

She and her victim, a 64-yearold man, had known each other for about eight months before the arson. He lived alone and suffered from emphysema. She was a friend of a friend who had come for a visit one day.

Daniels took it upon herself to be the man’s caregiver and moved into his house as a boarder shortly after. On January 26, the pair had travelled to Auckland for the day, he to visit a friend and she to go shopping.

On their journey home, the man asked Daniels to drive so he could drink beers in the passenger seat. As he later told the police, he noticed her demeanour was ‘‘a bit off’’.

They arrived home about 2pm and both had more beers. The man lay down on the couch to watch television and after a while drifted off to sleep.

For reasons unknown, Daniels then went into a bedroom and deliberately set part of it on fire.

Then she went to the back door - used as the main entry - locked it, and put the key in her pocket. She went back to the lounge and woke the man by yelling: ‘‘I’m going to burn the f...ing house down.’’

The man attempted to stomp out a fire that was burning under the dining room table and at that point noticed more flames and smoke down a hallway that led to the bedrooms.

The fire was rapidly taking hold and the man realised he had to get out. He tried the door handle, only to find the door locked and the key missing. He frantically began searching the lounge for his other set of keys.

It was at that point Daniels experienced her change of heart. She took the key from her pocket and unlocked the door, allowing the pair to escape.

Both suffered smoke inhalation and the man had minor burns to his feet. His 11-year-old labrador was not so lucky and died in the fire.

Firefighters arrived shortly afterward, having been alerted by neighbours, but they were too late to save much of the building.

At Daniels’ sentencing on Wednesday, Judge Christian Whata referred to the man’s victim impact statement in which he said he was distraught at losing his best mate in the fire.

For a time, it seemed his insurance company was not going to cover him for the cost of a new house, but it appeared this was now no longer the case.

Daniels had been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder, agoraphobia, alcohol use disorder as well as health issues and issues relating to socioeconomic deprivation. She had no great history of violent criminal behaviour, the judge said.

While there was an element of premeditation, ‘‘there is at least a reasonable possibility you acted on impulse or in an addled state’’.

‘‘It seems to me to be out-of-character behaviour; [however] there has to be a sentence of imprisonment, given the seriousness of the crime.’’

Daniels’ counsel Mark Sturm asked the judge to take note of her remorse and offer to take part in a restorative justice conference, as well as difficult circumstances in her personal history and upbringing.

A second charge of attempted murder was formally withdrawn by the Crown following Daniels’ sentencing.