Jockey murder accused 'spotted after alarm raised'
A man accused of starting a fire which killed two young jockeys, one of them Irish, was walking around barefoot and obviously drunk after the alarm was raised, a witness told a jury today.
Peter Brown (aged 37) is accused of setting light to a block of flats in Norton, North Yorkshire, and murdering Jamie Kyne (aged 18) from Kiltrogue, Co Galway, and Jan Wilson (aged 19) from Forfar, Scotland.
Today, William Stewart said that after he was alerted to the fire he saw Brown looking “lairy”.
Mr Stewart, who lives in a cottage directly opposite the Buckrose Court flats, told the jury he was disturbed by banging and screaming coming from outside.
He said he went out of his cottage and saw Brown outside the flats.
He told the jury he had only just returned from a friend’s house when he was alerted to something happening outside.
However, Mr Stewart said that when he was entering his home minutes earlier there was silence in the area.
He described how he had just turned his computer on and was beginning to prepare some food when he heard “banging and then someone screaming”.
Mr Stewart said he went out and saw smoke and flames coming from the flats.
Prosecutors have told the jury of six men and six women that Brown (aged 37) started the blaze when he lit rubbish in the communal entrance to the block of flats known as Buckrose Court in Norton, near Malton, North Yorkshire.
Brown was a former caretaker for the flats complex and lived in one of the blocks.
The prosecution case alleges that a drunken Brown torched the complex as an act of “revenge” after he was refused entry to a party in one of the flats.
The fire “raged” through the building, forcing many of the occupants to jump for their lives.
Miss Wilson and Mr Kyne were trapped in a top floor flat.
Brown, of School Croft, Brotherton, North Yorkshire, denies two charges of murder, two charges of manslaughter and one of arson with intent to endanger life.
