Fire that killed children ‘started by man feuding with their brother’

Four sleeping children were killed after being trapped in their bedrooms when their house was hit with petrol bombs in the early hours of the morning.

Zakbolland,23,launched the fatal attack on 11 December last year after being involved in a feud with the victims’ brother, Kyle Pearson, 16, a jury at Manchester Crown Court was told yesterday.

It is alleged that Bolland, along with David Worrall, 25, removed a fence panel from the garden of the Pearsons’ home, smashed a kitchen window and tossed in two lit petrol bombs.

One landed near the stairs, blocked the only exit to the ground floor and trapped the victims upstairs as flames engulfed the three-bedroom mid-terrace house in Walkden, Greater Manchester at about 5am.

Demi Pearson, 15, brother Brandon, eight, and sister Lacie, seven, all perished.

“Their apparently lifeless bodies were recovered by the firefighters who attended and battled their way through the heat, smoke and flames,” Paul Reid QC, prosecuting, told the court.

Their mother, Michelle Pearson, 35, was rescued along with her youngest daughter Lia, aged three, who died in hospital two days later.

Kyle Pearson, who had been feuding with Bolland, managed to escape along with a friend, Bobby Harris, who was also staying at the house.

The firebombing was the culmination of a series of titfor-tat attacks between Bolland and Kyle Pearson. The two had been friends until the accused’s Ford Focus was set on fire around two weeks before the fatal attack, and he blamed the teenager, Mr Reid told the jury as the prosecution opened the case at the start of the trial, which is scheduled to last up to six weeks.

The trial continues.