Neighbour twice risked his life to save kids from fire

Jan 31 2008 by Graeme Whitfield, The Journal

A NEIGHBOUR told a jury yesterday of his desperate attempts to rescue two young sisters trapped in their blazing home.

Simon Coates twice risked his life to save Tatum Leah and Demi-Jade Spence, but each time was beaten back by intense heat and dense black smoke.

The window fitter broke down as he recalled the moment he told their mother Anita he had been unable to save her daughters, who were asleep when the fire took hold.

“I could hear Anita screaming hysterically,” Mr Coates told Newcastle Crown Court.

“I tried to explain to her I tried my best to save the kids and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t get up the stairs.

“I watched those two kids grow up, the youngest since she was tiny. I used to watch her every day playing on her trampoline in the garden. Two poor defenceless kids, their lives taken away for what?”

Tatum Leah, 14, and Demi-Jade, 12, were in their bedrooms on the upper floors of the family home in Lisle Road, South Shields, when the fire broke out in the early hours.

Prosecutors allege their brother Shane Spence deliberately started the blaze using petrol to set alight a sofa in the living room. The 18-year-old denies two counts of murder and two of attempted murder relating to his parents Anita and John Spence, both 37. They survived the blaze, although Mr Spence suffered severe burns trying to rescue his daughters. Prosecutors allege Shane Spence’s life was in “turmoil” at the time of the fire, he had attempted suicide days before after an incident with the mother of his child and had also given up a job, to his father’s disapproval.

Yesterday Mr Coates, who lived opposite the Spences’ home, told the court he had been woken in bed by his son telling him there was a fire. He rang the fire brigade while getting dressed, handing over the call to his teenage daughter and running across the road barefoot in just a T-shirt and trousers.

He said black smoke was pouring from the house and there were flames in the living room window. “I saw Anita was just coming out of the garden gate hysterical,” he told the jury. “As I approached her I said, ‘Where’s the bairns’? and she said they were still in the house.

“I immediately tried the back door. I went into the kitchen and got virtually up to the living room door, but the smoke and heat was just unbelievable.”

Mr Coates said he was forced to retreat, but after running home to put on his workboots and fleece for protection, he returned to make a further attempt to rescue Tatum and Demi-Jade.

He said he went immediately inside, this time getting just past the door of the living room, crouching down to look for a way to get past the flames but realising it was impossible.

“The smoke and the flames were too much,” he told the court. “I was probably in the house, it seemed like minutes but it would have been seconds and I came back out.”

Mr Coates also described how he had also used a set of ladders in a vain attempt to get in via a first-floor window.

And he told the jury he had at one stage grabbed Mrs Spence, who had been intent on getting back into the house to reach her daughters. He said he feared she would be killed and pushed her back out of the gate towards his wife, who wrestled with her to hold her down.

Mr Coates said he had also seen the girls’ father standing “in a total trance” outside the house, wearing only his underwear and covered in what looked like soot. “I grabbed hold of his arm and my hand slid down because I took the skin off,” he said. “I could see it was just peeling off.”

The trial continues today.