Woman who set sleeping spouse on fire convicted of murder

A woman who poured gasolene on her spouse while he slept then set him on fire because she suspected that he was cheating has been convicted of murder.

Serita Housen Blair, also known as ‘Tasha’ and ‘Aunty’, pleaded guilty in the Home Circuit Court in Kingston on Thursday to the gruesome 2017 killing of her common-law partner Kenton Brown.

Among the evidence prosecutors Andrea Martin Swaby and Shanique Farquharson had lined up for Housen Blair’s murder trial were transcripts of a deathbed interview Brown gave a police constable in which he detailed the late-night attack.

“Me ongle wake up fi find miself inna fire wid di woman stand up over me,” he recounted to the constable hours after the May 23, 2017, attack inside the couple’s St Andrew home.

The transcripts were cited in a statement released by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) following the conviction.

The interview was cut short after Brown – father of two children aged seven and 10 years old at the time – began “shaking violently”, the constable recounted.

“Officer, take care a mi two pickney because dem nuh have nobody,” said the cop, recounting Brown’s last words to him.

Brown succumbed to his injuries four days later.

Flames from head to feet

A resident at the premises told investigators that he saw Brown coming from his room engulfed in flames “from his head to his feet”.

“The witness indicated that he heard the deceased say, ‘Auntie, you light me a fire,’ according to the statement from the ODPP, referring to Housen Blair.

“He observed when the deceased ran out of the yard and on to Espeut Avenue, towards Waltham Park Road ... and the accused, whom he knew as ‘Auntie’, standing on the verandah.”

Brown’s cause of death was listed as “complication of flame burns”, according to a post-mortem examination.

It revealed, too, that Brown had “partial and full-thickness burns involving 55 per cent of the total body surface area”.

Housen Blair is scheduled to be sentenced on April 21.

According to the evidence, Brown and Housen Blair had a tumultuous four-year relationship marked by frequent arguments.

On the morning of the incident, Brown drove his spouse, children, and a female friend to Faith’s Pen district in St Ann to clean his mother’s grave. The female friend, who is also the children’s caregiver, sat in the front of the car.

Everything was fine until they returned home, Brown said in his deathbed interview.

ACCUSED OF UNFAITHFULNESS

He said Housen Blair enquired if he was involved in a relationship with his children’s caregiver.

“Mi just smile an’ say no. Mi and di woman a family friend from long time. Den mi tell her say mi have work inna di morning and turn mi back and go sleep,” he said.

According to the evidence, Housen Blair made a tearful confession after she was informed of Brown’s death and cautioned by police investigators but gave a different account of the moments leading up to the attack.

Before that, she denied setting Brown on fire.

But in her confession, Housen Blair said Brown “always treat me bad” and claimed that he pushed her off their bed and told her to “come out o’ him house” after an argument over his decision to take the children’s caregiver on the St Ann trip.

“Mi go siddung pon di sofa and a say mi an you deh fi four years and a suh you a treat mi. Mi go put di pickney dem inna dem room and go buy gas a di gas station and throw it pon him and light it,” Housen Blair said under caution.

“Mi never did a think; mi never plan it.”

However, investigators said Housen Blair declined to give her account in a caution statement after arrangements were made for her to do so in the presence of an attorney.