‘Monster’ who killed mum and two kids by torching their flat jailed for life
A ‘heartless monster’ who murdered a mother and her two young daughters by setting fire to their flat then callously watched as they screamed for help has been jailed for at least 44 years.
Jamie Barrow, 31, torched the flat where Fatoumatta Hydara lived with her daughters, Fatimah, three, and one-year-old Naeemah Drammeh in Clifton, Nottingham, in November.
Both children died in the blaze in the early hours of November 20 and Mrs Hydara, 28, succumbed two days later.
During the trial, jurors heard Barrow had a ‘grievance’ over rubbish left in an alleyway outside their shared block of flats in Fairisle Close. Simon Ash KC, prosecuting, told them Barrow ‘walked casually away’ after ignoring their screams, and later called Nottingham City Council to see if they would compensate him for belongings damaged by smoke from the blaze.
Sentencing him at the city’s crown court, judge Mrs Justice Tipples said: ‘Fatoumatta and her two small children were asleep in their beds in their own home. You knew they were all home, asleep, and you knew they would have no chance whatsoever.
‘Seconds after you lit the fire you heard the fire alarm in the flat go off. You did nothing. Seconds after that you heard Fatoumatta screaming from the flat. You did nothing.
‘Rather, you stood and watched the fire take hold, and you stood there watching the fire develop and spread for five minutes, which was an enormous length of time in the circumstances.’
She added: ‘You were well aware of what you were doing and I am quite sure from what you did that you wanted to kill Mrs Hydara and her children.
‘You were very angry, but it is only you who knows why you did this.’
As Barrow was being taken down after hearing his sentence, members of the public gallery shouted ‘good’ and ‘they should hang you’.
Fatoumatta’s husband Aboubacarr Drammeh read a moving victim impact statement, describing how he had to go and identify the bodies of their children on his 40th birthday.
He said: ‘I was hopeless, and I was left helpless, because I didn’t have a family, and it was the people who mattered most to me. Since then, it has been a downward plunge into darkness and the unknown.
‘It was unthinkable, it was unplanned, and I wish this on no one else, including you. Two little angels, their lifeless bodies lying next to each other. I held their whole hands. I wished I could switch with them.
‘Only Allah knows why. I have to accept and prepare for the next chapter of my life. All I can say is I am sorry.
‘I was not there, I should have been. I had a responsibility as a father and a husband to protect, that was my basic responsibility. I make no excuses.’
Addressing Barrow, Mr Drammeh added: ‘Because of you, and only you, I failed in my only responsibility as a father.’
In a second statement from Mrs Hydara’s mother, Aminata Dibba, read by junior prosecutor Sarah Knight, Barrow was described as ‘heartless’.
She said: ‘The day I found out my granddaughters’ lives had been taken by this monster, it felt like at that moment I would do anything to swap my life for theirs.’
Mr Drammeh – who was in America at the time of the fire – said he was due to return to the UK a week later to help arrange the family’s move to America.
He said: ‘On that evening of November 19, the conversation was normal.
‘I went to sleep, took a nap, went to bed at night and woke up for early morning prayers.
‘While I was praying, my phone started ringing continuously. I thought it was Fatoumatta, wanting to FaceTime.
‘We all know it wasn’t. It was my mother-in-law and my sister, so I called back my mother-in-law and she said there was an accident and the kids did not survive and Fatoumatta was in the ICU.
‘But it wasn’t an accident, was it?’
Turning to Barrow, sitting silently in the dock, he called him ‘a coward who knew exactly what he was doing and exactly when to do it’.
He added: ‘You had choices, but you chose otherwise. Hate, anger, destruction, I don’t know, but of all the choices you had, you chose the most damaging of all.
‘I am angry, I am sad, I am hurt, I am heartbroken. At the same time, I am grateful for them being a part of me. I am grateful for Fatoumatta and the kids, as they made me a better person.
‘I have no hatred to anybody in the world, including you.’
Barrow had drunk several cans of lager before lighting the fire and was later seen on CCTV walking his dog while smoking a cigarette.
He asked officers how ‘bad’ the fire was and in the hours after the blaze admitted to his actions, telling officers: ‘I need to tell you something about the fire next door.’
During evidence, he said he ‘can’t explain’ why he targeted his neighbour’s flat, which he claimed to believe was empty at the time and that he did not intend to harm anyone.
But the jury rejected his account after almost seven hours of deliberations, with members of the victims’ families weeping as the verdicts were given.
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