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Coral Watson, the wife of convicted Marlborough Sounds double murderer Scott Watson, has described hearing the agonising screams of a teenager she was caring for as he was overcome by fire.
Mrs Watson was woken to the deadly blaze by the cries from other children staying with her at her North Canterbury property.
Anthony Chiles-Peart, 17, who Mrs Watson described as being like a son to her, initially got out of the fire in a garage converted to a sleep-out, known as the shed, but went back in to try to save a pet dog, Merlin.
"I could hear Anthony screaming. I could hear him from the shed. I knew where he was. I saw the fire...from the front of the shed," Mrs Watson said in a statement read to an inquest into the death yesterday.
Unable to save Anthony, nicknamed 'Fridge', she gathered up the nine other children staying at the property.
"I knew Anthony was in trouble," she said.
"At that stage I focused on the [other] kids. I was asked to do a head count but my mind was racing. I was doing 10,000 things at once."
North Canterbury coroner David Crerar yesterday ruled that Anthony died of smoke inhalation after re-entering the garage on the morning of October 3 last year.
A candle burning in a paper lantern suspended from the ceiling in the garage is believed to have started the blaze.
The garage where Anthony, Mrs Watson's son Scott, and another teenager, Nathan Groom, had been sleeping did not have a smoke alarm.
Fire Service safety officer Graeme Reid said although those in the garage initially got out, if they have been alerted earlier by a smoke alarm, the fire could have been extinguished whilestill small. "The decision to try to rescue the dog would likely not have needed to be made."
Nathan Groom, who was under Mrs Watson's care and sleeping in the garage, recalled waking up with flames at the bottom of his bed.
After getting out, he tried to get a garden hose to fight the fire.
"While I was trying to get the big hose going, 'Fridge' went back in to try to get Scott's dog. When I got back to the garage it was so well alight."
Mr Reid said Anthony could misjudged the intensity of the fire and been caught in a "flashover", when the space from the floor to the ceiling is filled with flames.
