Arsonist Jamie Barrow was handed a 44-year minimum term of a life sentence for the murders of Fatoumatta Hydara, aged 28, and daughters, Fatimah Drammeh, aged three, and 18-month-old Naeemah Drammeh. Here Legal affairs correspondent Rebecca Sherdley looks at how police and prosecutors prove their case.
The reams of evidence in the case against murderer Jamie Barrow pointed to a desperate man at rock bottom with the demons of his terrible past plaguing his mind as he drank and played loud music on the night before he torched his neighbour's flat. Despite Barrow's depressed state, fuddled by drinking beer all night, the attack had plainly involved planning and thought as to how to set a fire the the occupied flat next door.
Barrow decided to start the fire inside Mrs Hydara’s home at the only point of exit, decanted petrol from his motorbike as an accelerant, put on medical gloves and carefully choose a bottle to fit through the letter box to get the petrol inside the property. Mrs Justice Tipples, who sentenced Barrow on Friday (July 7), said he had inserted the bottle through the letter box, and poured the petrol into the flat at the very bottom on the stairs, which provided the only access to the living area on the first floor.
