Man found guilty of murder over NZ boarding house fire
A man who burned a deadly new Zealand boarding house was found guilty of five murders and guilty of a swaddle.
The jury in the Supreme Court in Wellington reached decisions against Esarona David Lologist after the negotiations that lasted less than three days, and rejected the defense of the madness discussed by Lologa’s lawyers.
The 50 -year -old Lologue was suppressed during the five -week hearing, but when he was sentenced, the order was removed.
Prosecutors admitted that Lologue had schizophrenia when Lologa put a fire twice in May 2023 for a night in Wellington Lodge Hosteline.
They said he had burned a deadly fire because he wanted to seek transfer to other accommodation, not because of mental illness.
Lologa’s lawyers did not deny that their clients burned fires, but they said he wasn’t guilty of madness. In New Zealand, this meant that the jury had to admit that the defendant could not understand that his actions were wrong.
His lawyers said that there was no evidence that he had identified fires because he wanted to live elsewhere, but the prosecutors said Lologa did not like to live in a boarding house and wanted to move somewhere else.
The Lologist first put a sofa in a common area late in the evening and asked for the release of the building. After the inhabitants extinguished the fire, he returned and placed pillows and blankets in a closet before burning.
He left the building without raising the alarm or calling an emergency service.
During the hearing, the court heard the records of desperate phone calls calculated from firefighters and tenants, including a man who jumped out of a window to escape from the fire.
In a police interview for the jury, RNZ rejected that officers refused fires despite the fact that they were seen in the security camera images.
Some of the residents of the boarding house contained social services customers and older, disabled and other vulnerable people, as well as nurses working in a nearby hospital.
The burnt building stands in Newtown’s suburb.
Among the deceased inhabitants were colorful and well -known Wellington identities. Michael Wahrlich, tennis balls hokkabazlık and Liam Hockings’ daily foot tours of the region made him a familiar face for the natives was a senior oser. The other three sacrifices were Kenneth Barnard, Peter O’Sullivan and Melvin Parun.
The murder was sentenced to a mandatory lifetime imprisonment in New Zealand, and the judges had to sentence a criminal to at least 10 years of imprisonment without applying for a conditional release. Arson is sentenced to imprisonment of up to 14 years.
The Lolog will be sentenced in November.
