A woman whose four young boys died in a house fire after she went to a supermarket has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Deveca Rose, 30, was found guilty of the manslaughter of her two sets of twins, Leyton and Logan Hoath, aged three, and Kyson and Bryson Hoath, aged four, in October last year.

Jurors were told the four children died after a discarded cigarette or upturned tea light sparked a blaze at the family house in Collingwood Road, Sutton, in south London.

Judge Mark Lucraft KC said during sentencing on Friday: “There are no words to describe this case other than a deeply tragic one.”

During the prosecution’s opening statement last year, Kate Lumsdon KC alleged that Rose left the children alone to visit a supermarket on the evening of 16 December 2021.

She also told the court at the time that “there was rubbish thickly spread throughout the house”.

Children ‘too young’ to escape

Rose, who the court heard suffered from mental health problems, covered her head with a thick hood and hid her face as she was sentenced.

Judge Lucraft told the court that the children were left alone by their mother in an “unsafe” house that was lit using tea light candles when the fire broke out.

He then noted that she had already been to Sainsbury’s earlier that day, and her second trip at the time of the fire was not to purchase any items that were “essential or vital”.

The front door was locked at the time of the fire, the judge noted, and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in the home were either not working or were out of battery.

“You were not there, and the children were too young to know what to do,” he said.

“As a result of what you did, they were all killed.”

He then described the victims as lively and engaging children who were “deeply loved” by all who had a role in their care.

After the fire started, the court heard that the children ran upstairs and started calling for help.

A neighbour attempted to break down the front door, and firefighters later found their bodies under beds once they entered the property.

The boys were rushed to separate hospitals, where they died from inhalation of fumes that night.

Rose arrived home while firefighters were still tackling the blaze, and claimed she left the children with a friend called Jade. Police concluded she either did not exist or was not at the property that day.

The court heard social worker Georgia Singh had raised concerns about the family and that the case was closed three months before the fire.

Previously, a health visitor had also expressed worries, but they were not followed up after she retired, jurors were told.

The children had not attended school for three weeks before their deaths.

It also heard evidence which suggested Rose may have suffered from a personality disorder – but the prosecution said this was not a defence.

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Dad of boys ‘will never recover’

Dalton Hoath, father of the boys, told the court ahead of sentencing that losing his sons was “the worst day of my life”.

In a victim impact statement read to the court by a relative, he said: “Their lives had just begun but were cut so short. It was every parent’s worst nightmare… I have tried to be some sort of normal for my own family now.

“I will never recover from losing my funny, beautiful boys. I have to fight for all of us left behind and live with this massive pain in my heart before I meet them again.”

The boys’ grandfather Jason Hoath also told the court, “the pain from this loss has shattered my life in every possible way,” while their great-grandmother Sally Johnson said: “The thought of them crying and screaming out will haunt me forever.”

Step-grandmother Kerrie Hoath later said outside of the court that the children had been “cruelly taken away from us” by Rose.

She then added: “The impact [the children] have made on us in their short lives cannot be measured and will never be forgotten.

“We miss them every day and will always hold them in our hearts. While there will be better days to come, the hole that has been left by our children’s deaths cannot be filled.”

Three judges who oversaw family court proceedings related to the care of Sara Sharif can be named next week, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Mr Justice Williams issued a ruling last year that the three judges involved in historic family court cases related to Sara, as well as social workers and guardians, could not be named due to a “real risk” of harm from a “virtual lynch mob”.

News organisations had previously appealed against Mr Williams’s decision on the grounds of transparency about the court case relating to the murder of the 10-year-old.

Sara’s father Urfan Sharif and her stepmother Beinash Batool were jailed for life in December for years of horrific “torture” and “despicable” abuse that led to her death.

On Friday, Sir Geoffrey Vos said: “In the circumstances of this case, the judge had no jurisdiction to anonymise the historical judges either on 9 December 2024 or thereafter. He was wrong to do so.”

He added that “if, notwithstanding the lack of evidence to that effect, the judge was concerned about their being named, there were other, more appropriate, ways to protect them”.

Sir Geoffrey added on Friday that “judges will sit on many types of case in which feelings run high” and “where there may be risks to their personal safety”.

“It is up to the authorities with responsibility for the courts to put appropriate measures in place to meet these risks, depending on the situation presented by any particular case,” he said.

“The first port of call is not, and cannot properly be, the anonymisation of the judge’s name.”

He also said that Mr Williams “got carried away” in his ruling and “behaved unfairly” toward two journalists. He then noted that the High Court judge made an “unwarranted” sarcastic remark about a 2021 Channel 4 programme.

Sir Geoffrey told the court: “He said, for no reason that I could discern: ‘Thank goodness that journalists don’t have to operate as the courts do and hear both sides before delivering their verdict!’.

“Such sarcasm has no proper place in a court judgment.”

Earlier this month, the Court of Appeal heard the judges who oversaw court proceedings had “serious concerns” about the risks posed to them and their families if they were named.

It also heard that two of the judges are retired, with the third still sitting as a judge, and that all three wanted “to convey their profound shock, horror and sadness about what happened to Sara Sharif”.

Mr Williams previously also argued that holding individuals involved in those proceedings responsible was “equivalent to holding the lookout on the Titanic responsible for its sinking”.

Previously released documents showed that Surrey County Council first had contact with Sharif and Sara’s mother, Olga Sharif, in 2010 – more than two years before Sara was born.

At the time, the council had received “referrals indicative of neglect” relating to her two older siblings, known only as Z and U.

The authority began care proceedings concerning Z and U in January 2013, and involved Sara within a week of her birth.

Between 2013 and 2015, several allegations of abuse were made that were never tested in court, with one hearing in 2014 told that the council had “significant concerns” about the children returning to Sharif, “given the history of allegations of physical abuse of the children and domestic abuse with Mr Sharif as the perpetrator”.

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In 2019, a judge approved Sara moving to live with her father at the home in Woking where she later died after a campaign of abuse.

Sharif and Batool were jailed for life for Sara’s murder in December, with minimum terms of 40 years and 33 years.

Her uncle, Faisal Malik, was jailed for 16 years after being convicted of causing or allowing her death.

In a statement after the court’s ruling, freelance journalists Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers – who challenged Mr Williams’s order – said: “We feel that any other decision would have set a dangerous precedent going forward and undermined the efforts undertaken over the last two years to open up the family courts to greater transparency.

“There now need to be real efforts to work out what went wrong in this heartbreaking case where a young girl’s life was stolen from her, and what might need to change.”

The grandson of a pie company tycoon who killed his best friend in a “frenzied attack” on Christmas Eve has been sentenced.

Dylan Thomas, 24, killed William Bush, 23, at the property they shared in the Llandaff area of Cardiff on 24 December 2023.

Thomas had admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility but denied Mr Bush’s murder.

At Cardiff Crown Court in November, a jury of 10 men and two women found him guilty of murder.

On Friday he was handed a life sentence, with a minimum term of 19 years imprisonment, minus the time he has already spent in custody.

Mr Bush sustained 37 stab wounds in total, including 21 to the neck, and his cause of death was given as “multiple stab wounds to the neck and trunk”.

The court heard Thomas used two knives – a kitchen knife and flick knife – in the attack on Mr Bush.

Thomas, who the trial heard has schizophrenia, had claimed in the immediate aftermath of the attack that he was acting in self-defence.

He is the grandson of Sir Stanley Thomas, the founder of Peter’s Pies, a company based in South Wales.

Reading a victim impact statement, Mr Bush’s sister Catrin said her brother’s life was taken “in the most barbaric and cruel way”.

“Instead of Will returning home for dinner on Christmas Eve it was Dyfed-Powys Police knocking on our door informing us that Will had died,” she said.

Ms Bush said her family could not “begin to comprehend the fear and suffering that Will endured on that day”.

“Will was such a loyal, funny and caring person. He lit up every room he walked into with his cheeky grin and quick-witted humour,” she added.

“I sat through as much of the trial as I could bear, as you can imagine some of the evidence was too heartbreaking for me to sit through.”

William Bush’s father, John David Bush, told the court he couldn’t attend any of the previous hearings but was “determined” to attend the sentencing.

“The instinct of all parents is to love and protect our children and to keep them safe, but we were not able to do this and this haunts us every day,” he said.

“All aspects of his life, and indeed his body, have been dissected. He has had no privacy in death.”

Mr Bush added: “His life was short, but he had, and continues to have, meaning.

“Imagine all the things that you would have missed if you had died at 23. Marriage, children, family, the daily joys of the life.”

In her victim impact statement, Mr Bush’s long-term girlfriend Ella Jeffries said he was “petrified of dying” and his death had “left an indescribable pain and a darkness in [her] life”.

“Will was the love of my life and meant everything to me,” she said. “Life will never be the same without Will.”

In mitigation, Orlando Pownall KC said Thomas was a “young man” at the time of the offence and has “no previous convictions”.

Mr Pownall also cited Thomas’s mental illness, after his trial heard he lived with schizophrenia.

Handing down her sentence, Mrs Justice Steyn said Thomas murdered Mr Bush in a “sustained and ferocious knife attack”.

She said Mr Bush was “senselessly murdered and deprived of many, many decades of a happy and fulfilling life”.

“The sentence I will pass is not intended as a measure of the value of Will’s life, that is beyond measure,” she added.

She said the “frenzied attack” was persistent in nature and “must have terrified the deceased and caused him great pain and distress”.

Mrs Justice Steyn thanked those who had brought Thomas to justice and paid tribute to Mr Bush’s family for their “dignity, fortitude and restraint”.

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Detective Constable Joanne Harris from South Wales Police said the force’s thoughts were with Mr Bush, his family and girlfriend.

“While we recognise that Dylan Thomas’ sentence of 19 years’ imprisonment won’t bring William back, we do hope that this outcome goes some way to allowing the family to grieve and help in some way with their heartbreak,” she said.

Chris Evans from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the level of violence inflicted upon Mr Bush was “terrifying” and “led to the tragic death of a young man”.