The man accused of murdering five people by setting a Wellington hostel alight started the blaze because he didn’t want to live there anymore, the Crown says.
The 50-year-old, who has interim name suppression, had lived at Loafers Lodge on Newtown’s Adelaide Rd for just a week before he started the deadly blaze.
The man is on trial in the Wellington High Court. He has denied five charges of murder and two of arson.
The blaze tore through the boarding house at 12.30am on May 16, 2023, as residents slept.
Five people could not be saved. They were Mike Wahrlich, Liam Hockings, Peter O’Sullivan, Melvin Parun and Kenneth Barnard.
“The Crown understands that there’s no dispute that the person responsible for lighting that fire at Loafers Lodge was the defendant,” Crown prosecutor Stephanie Bishop said in her opening address to the jury today.
“As you will see from CCTV footage from inside Loafers Lodge, [the defendant] set two fires that night,” Bishop said.
He set the first fire under a couch about 10.30pm, trying several times to make it ignite. He left the building, not taking his key or access fob.
The fire alarms went off and residents put out the fire themselves.
When the defendant returned, he had to be let back into the building by someone else. He returned to the third floor and took some cushions from the couches, placing them in a cupboard and setting them alight.
“Smoke begins filling the corridor,” Bishop said. “He walks through the intensifying smoke and leaves the building for the final time.”
Many residents did not know what was happening until smoke entered their rooms.
“At 25 minutes past midnight on the 16th of May, 2023, following a 111 call to emergency services, firefighters and police rushed to the building,” Bishop said.
“They were met by a scene of chaos. Black smoke billowed from the building. They received reports people were trapped inside.”
Rescuers knew some residents had escaped to the building’s roof, and there was a report one resident had jumped from the roof to a nearby building.
“Amid this chaos, the firefighters entered the building. Firefighters from across our region attended to help out with the fire. They conducted a search and rescue operation.
“While there was confusion about the building’s layout, firefighters managed to save a number of residents, but despite their best efforts, five residents could not be saved.”
Bishop suggested the defendant did not like living at Loafers Lodge, and having been there for a week, he lit the fire in order to receive accommodation at a different place.
She told the jury a person could still be guilty of murder even if they did not want their actions to kill anybody.
According to the law, a killing can be considered murder when the killer does an act they know is likely to cause death, even though they may have desired that their objective could be achieved without killing anyone.
“It doesn’t matter if someone after the event regrets what they did,” she said.
“Of course, you can’t look into somebody’s mind and know what they were thinking at the time. Intention has to be inferred.”
She said the defendant could have known someone could die from his actions – lighting a concealed fire in a crowded building, with 84 people inside, late at night.
She noted the man’s lawyers were likely to raise a defence of insanity.
Bishop said for insanity to be found, the jury needed to believe beyond the balance of probabilities that the defendant was labouring under a disease of the mind - to such an extent that it made him incapable of either understanding the nature and quality of the acts, or knowing the act of murdering the five people was morally wrong.
The senior firefighter in charge of the Loafers Lodge scene said his decision to send rescuers in to the building was “the biggest call I’d ever made”.
Fire and Emergency senior station officer Clark Townsley gave evidence this afternoon about being the first crew on the scene and discovering the scale of the fire.
He was moving through the building to assess where the fire was and how to attack it, he explained.
“On the third floor there was a thick and dense smoke until about five or six hundred millimetres off the ground.”
He said they were in the early stages of the fire and it was developing “rapidly”.
“I would say it would be the biggest call I’d ever made,” he told Crown prosecutor Grant Burston.
“What was the call that you made?” Burston asked.
“Send people in to get them out,” Townsley replied.
He described the fire crews’ efforts to tackle the blaze, hampered by abuse from evacuating occupants, and faulty or absent fire equipment and appliances.
He later was informed someone had leapt from the roof onto a nearby building, suffering a broken leg. Other patients were being moved to a triage area, some becoming unco-operative and refusing treatment.
Then he saw the fire “flashover”, causing the eastern windows to smash.
Flashover is a “very dangerous” phenomenon, where the fire becomes hot enough to simultaneously ignite all combustible materials in the space.
“In a matter of seconds it can be fatal for a fully-kitted firefighter,” Townsley said.
“Flashover made any chances of survival on the fire floor highly unlikely.”
Crews worked to dampen the fire from outside before firefighters planned a re-entry. It was then that they discovered five or six bodies in the building.
Townsley was relieved of his role about 8am.
He said they saved “a lot of lives” but would have had a better tactical position if they had a taller aerial appliance.
The trial, before Justice Peter Churchman, is expected to take five weeks, and more than 100 witnesses will be called to give evidence.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.