Neighbour killed mother and two children in flat blaze after row over bin bags
A MAN is facing life in prison after he was found guilty of killing a mother and her two young daughters in a fire following a row over bin bags.
Jamie Barrow, 31, poured petrol through the letter box of Fatoumatta Hydara’s first-floor flat before setting it alight and ‘casually’ walking away.
She was inside sleeping with her two children – Fatimah, three, and Naeemah, who was just one.
Firemen pulled the three from the blaze in the early hours but the two girls were pronounced dead at hospital, while Mrs Hydara, 28, lost her fight for life two days later.
Barrow, her neighbour of five years, admitted starting the fires, claiming he didn’t think anyone was inside.
But Nottingham Crown Court was told screams could be heard coming from the flat, and Barrow did nothing. He was found guilty of murder yesterday after a three-week trial. He will be sentenced on Friday.
Paying tribute to Mrs Hydara, relatives said she was an ‘incredible mother’ with a ‘pure heart’ who had been planning a new life in the US.
Jurors were told Barrow ‘ had a grievance’ with Mrs Hydara over his belief she was leaving bags of rubbish in an alley at the back of the flats in Clifton, Nottingham.
But the prosecution found no evidence Mrs Hydara was responsible. Barrow told the court he had been starting fires since he was 14.
He said he decided to light the fatal fire after ‘an elastic band snapped’ in his head. ‘I knew I was going to set fire to something, I just didn’t know what,’ he added. ‘I can’t explain why I picked the victim’s flat.’
Barrow, who has emotionally unstable personality disorder, had lived in his flat since 2015, two years before Mrs Hydara moved into hers.
On the night of the fire, he walked past Mrs Hydara’s flat on his way to a shop at 10.55pm. She was still awake, having just come off a phone call to her husband – and a light on in the property would have been an ‘indicator’ that the family were home.
Simon Ash KC, prosecuting, said had told jurors: ‘He knew there would be no way for them to escape.
‘He stayed while the fire took hold. The fire alarm started to sound and shortly after that Mrs Hydara or one of her children started screaming.
‘The defendant did nothing to help. He did not call the fire service or alert anyone to what was happening. About five minutes later he walked casually away, leaving them trapped in that burning flat.’ Firefighters were called by other residents at 3.17am on November 20 last year.
Mrs Hydara’s husband of eight years, Aboubacarr Drammeh, 40, was working as a biomedical technologist in the US. His wife and children had been planning to join him there.
Police said the family’s hopes of reuniting had been ‘cruelly ended’ by Barrow’s ‘despicable’ crime. Detective Chief Inspector Clare Dean said: ‘This is a tragic case in which a caring and compassionate mother and two young children were taken away in the cruellest way imaginable.’
In a statement, Mrs Hydara’s family said Barrow’s actions had ‘caused a multigenerational trauma that we will never understand’. They added: ‘Fatoumatta... was the most incredible mother to Fatimah and Naeemah, two angels who deserved a beautiful childhood and a full life.’
‘He stayed while the fire took hold’