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Two sets of young twins died in a house fire in England after their mother allegedly left them home alone while she was out shopping, per PEOPLE.
Four-year-old twins Bryson and Kyson Hoath and their younger brothers Logan and Leyton, 3, died following a house fire in south London in December 2021. Their mother, 29-year-old Deveca Rose, was charged last year with four counts of manslaughter and child cruelty, which she has denied.
According to prosecutors, trash and human waste scattered throughout the home caught fire from a discarded cigarette or upturned tea light.
“She either dropped a lit cigarette before she left or left tea lights burning, or both,” Kate Lumsdon KC of the prosecution said of Rose. “A fire started on or under the sofa, and due to the amount of rubbish in the house it took hold quickly.”
During the fire, the children are believed to have run upstairs and shouted to their neighbors for help while their mother was at the grocery store. Neighbors heard the children and kicked down the door to the home, but the fire was too intense for them to enter, according to Lumsdon.
“The children ran upstairs and shouted to the neighbors,” Lumsdon said. "The children were, we suggest, locked in the house and could not escape. They ran upstairs to get away from the fire and shouted to the neighbors. But it was too late for anything to be done."
Prosecutors said the boys were found “limp and unconscious” under a bed upstairs. Firemen also discovered “rubbish all over the floor and human excrement. There was a mattress and a door on the stairs," Lumsdon said.
Lumsdon added that the “toilet and the bath were full of rubbish and not in use. Buckets and pots were used instead." The boys allegedly hadn't attended school in three weeks. They were taken to a hospital where they were pronounced dead. The cause of death was inhalation of fire fumes.
After returning from shopping, Rose allegedly told first responders that she left her children with a woman named Jade. Prosecutors, however, said there was no sign of another person at the property.
“Jade did not exist, or, if she existed at all, she did not play the role ascribed to her by Ms Rose that night," a police investigation determined.
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