12 years behind bars for teenagers who killed mother in house blaze

TWO teenagers were each jailed for 12 years yesterday after starting a blaze that killed a woman as she tried to rescue her two sons.

Stephen Muir, 16, and his 15-year-old accomplice broke into Angela Brown's home and set a fire by the stairs as the family slept.

Ms Brown, 31, was awoken by a fire alarm in the house and managed to rescue her three-year-old daughter. But she collapsed while trying to save her sons, then aged 12 and six.

Last month, Muir and his friend – who cannot be named for legal reasons – admitted killing Ms Brown and endangering the lives of her children by starting the blaze at her home in Culzean Place, Kilwinning, Ayrshire, on 28 September, 2008.

Sentencing the pair at the High Court in Glasgow, temporary judge Bill Dunlop, QC, told them: "Your sole purpose that night was destruction.

"The tragedy is that you gave no thought whatsoever to the fact that destruction might involve the lives of the people in the house who you must have known were there.

"One of the most abhorrent features of your wickedness is that you set the fire in the stairwell."

The judge said the teenagers would have to live the rest of their lives knowing they had destroyed a family. He also pointed out they will have served their sentence by the time they reach the age of the mother whose life they took.

The court heard that the two youths had been part of a group who lied to their parents about staying the night at one another's houses and instead spent the night roaming the streets.

Muir, then 15, and his friend, who was 13 at the time, entered Ms Brown's home, where Muir set fire to a cushion in one of the rooms downstairs.

His co-accused then began a fire in the stair area, setting off the alarm. The youths fled the scene, and when fire crews arrived there at about 6am they recovered Ms Brown and her sons, who were taken to Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock.

The mother was pronounced dead and her sons were released after treatment lasting more than two weeks.

John Scullion, prosecuting, said: "The consensus of medical opinion is that, but for prompt medical treatment, both (boys] could have died."

The court heard that Muir, from Bilby Terrace, Irvine, and the 15-year-old spoke to friends after the fire and admitted they had been involved. The pair were later arrested and blamed each other for starting the blaze.

Muir and his accomplice were originally charged with murder and attempted murder, but guilty pleas were accepted to the lesser charges.

Members of Ms Brown's family cried in court as details of the tragedy were read out yesterday.

Later, George Armstrong, 35, from Stevenston, Ayrshire, Ms Brown's former partner and the father of her two sons, said the family would now try to put their lives back together.

He said: "I hope they wake up every day and realise that they took away someone's mother."

Brian McConnachie QC, defending Muir, said he was from a good family and had expressed regret and remorse at the crime.

He went on: "It will be of no comfort whatsoever, but Mr Muir has asked me to express his regret and remorse for his involvement in this offence and the effect on the family."

The court heard his co-accused came from a broken home and had abused drugs and alcohol from the age of 11.

He, too, the judge was told, was finding it difficult to face up to what he had done.

The judge said Muir had achieved several academic qualifications and wanted to be a car mechanic. His co-accused was also said to be "intelligent".