Four children who were murdered in their sleep when two men threw petrol bombs into their home are being buried together today.
Demi Pearson, 15, and her siblings Lacie, seven, Lia, three, and Brandon, eight, were trapped in their bedrooms after Zak Bolland and David Worrall hurled Molotov cocktails into their house in the dead of night, with one landing near the stairs and blocking their only escape route.
Their mother Michelle Pearson, 36, is not to able to attend her children’s funeral as she continues to battle horrific injuries suffered in the blaze.
Ms Pearson escaped with her youngest daughter Lia who died in hospital two days later. She only learned her children had died when she awoke from a medically induced coma four months after the sickening attack.
Hundreds of grief-stricken mourners dressed in blue and pink have lined the streets in Walkden, Greater Manchester to pay their respects as specially-made coffins, including a pink Peppa Pig one for Lia, are carried past in a horse-drawn carriage.
The procession will make its way past Bridgewater Primary School, where Lacie and Brandon were pupils, for a minute’s silence before ending at St Paul’s Church.
Firefighters who tried to save the lives of the four children formed a guard of honour ahead of the cortège arriving for the funeral service
Brandon, eight, Lacie, seven, and Lia, three, (pictured) were murdered as they slept in their beds when the fire ripped through their home
The community has struggled to come to terms with the horrific murder of Demi, pictured, and her brother and sisters
Mother Michelle Pearson, 36, was badly injured in the fire at her home in Salford, Greater Manchester, last December, and will not be able to attend her children’s funeral. Pictured, the order of service
Bolland, 23, and Worrall, 26, were both given four life sentences for murder after a trial in May and must serve a minimum of 40 and 37 years respectively before parole. Bolland’s girlfriend Courtney Brierley, 20, was jailed for 21 years for four counts of manslaughter.
The trio were caught on CCTV cameras laughing and joking in the run-up to the attack, and Bolland even gloated when police decided to take no further action about an attack on the house two weeks earlier.
Mrs Pearons’s mother Sandra Lever said yesterday that due to ‘unforeseen medical circumstances’ her daughter would now not be able to attend. Instead the funerals for her son and daughters will be held without her.
The mother-of-six had struggled to grasp four of her children were dead and has been in hospital for the past year.
Her family said she had wanted to attend the funeral despite still being very poorly after suffering a series of infections that could threaten her life.
The community has struggled to come to terms with the horrific murder of the ‘four angels’ in December last year.
Zac Bolland and Courtney Brierley. In CCTV images Bolland, Worrall and Brierley looked as if they had not a care in the world as they were pictured by an in-store camera snapping up two boxes of Budweiser beer at an off-licence in the city in preparation for the attack
All four children will be buried together, with Lia (pictured) in a Peppa Pig coffin because of her love for the show
Zak Bolland and David Worrall hurled Molotov cocktails into their house in the dead of night, with one landing near the stairs and blocking their only escape route
Bolland’s bottle ‘exploded’ near the stairs, blocking the only exit to the ground floor and trapping the victims upstairs.
Mrs Pearson’s anguished screams: ‘Not the kids! Not my kids!’ could be heard around the neighbourhood as flames engulfed the house at 5am last December 11.
All four ‘died a terrible death’ from smoke inhalation and burns, the trial of the killers heard.
Mrs Pearson’s son Kyle, 17, had been involved in a ‘petty’ feud with Bolland over damage to his £200 car, prompting a series of tit-for-tat attacks.
In CCTV images Bolland, Worrall and Brierley looked as if they had not a care in the world as they were pictured by an in-store camera snapping up two boxes of Budweiser beer at an off-licence in the city in preparation for the attack.
The group appeared to shared a joke with staff and fellow customers before an unsuspecting cashier even gave Worrall a friendly ‘fist bump’ as they left the store.
But within minutes, two of the bottles had been turned into deadly molotov cocktails to firebomb the family home of Kyle Pearson who had been in a feud with Bolland.
CCTV images captured Bolland and Worrall filling up a petrol can at a Texaco fuel station before arriving at the property in Walkden.
The two men then removed a fence panel from the garden of the Pearsons’ home, smashed a kitchen window and tossed in two lit petrol bombs.
One landed near the stairs, blocking the only exit to the ground floor and trapped the occupants as they lay asleep inside.
Kyle, 16, managed to escape out of an upstairs window but his siblings Demi, Brandon and Lacie, sleeping in a front bedroom, perished in the flames.
Mrs Pearson had made a series of complaints to police and her housing provider Salford Council, asking to be moved.
An investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct is ongoing.