Regardless of where a person lives, leaving 3- and 4-year-olds home alone is considered unsafe. Kids that young are not equipped to care for themselves, let alone react appropriately to an emergency. Recently, a London mother was sentenced after two sets of twins died in a house fire after she left them home alone to go shopping.
The tragic incident involving Deveca Rose’s four young children – twins Leyton and Logan Hoath, 3, and twins Kyson and Bryson Hoath, 4 – happened in December 2021. In October 2024, she was found guilty of manslaughter. Now, the bereaved mom has learned her fate.
More from CafeMom: Mom Left 3- & 5-Year-Old Kids Home Alone To Go Out Drinking – Now Friend Wants To Call CPS
The mother was sentenced after her two sets of twins died in the fire.
On January 24, 2025, Rose was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the BBC reported. She was found guilty of four counts of manslaughter on October 3, 2024. However, she was not convicted of one count of child neglect.
In December 2021, Rose’s sons died in a house fire after she left them home alone.
On December 16, 2021, Rose allegedly left her four sons locked in her home so she could shop in Sainsbury, The London Times reported. Neighbors noticed the house was on fire shortly after 7 p.m. and tried to break in to save the children. Sadly, because of the intensity of the blaze, the good samaritans could not enter to rescue the boys.
Firefighters reportedly found the brothers “limp and unconscious” under a bed in an upstairs bedroom. The boys were pronounced dead at a local hospital.
The boys’ cause of death was smoke inhalation.
According to investigators, the fire was thought to have “started in the living room on the ground floor either by a candle/tealight or a burning cigarette,” People reported. It spread quickly “due to the floor being strewn with discarded items and rubbish.”
Metropolitan Police determined the boys “fled to an upstairs bedroom where they would be overcome by smoke” as the fire spread. Post-mortem examinations confirmed the two sets of twins died from “inhalation of fire fumes.”
More from CafeMom: $24K Reward Offered To ID Couple Who Abandoned 3 Newborn Babies
Rose and her children lived in ‘very poor conditions.’
Prosecutor Kate Lumsdon KC told the court, per The London Times: “Firemen noted that there was rubbish all over the floor and human excrement. There was a mattress and a door on the stairs.”
Lumsdon continued, “Although Ms. Rose ensured that her children were well turned out, the reality was that they lived in very poor conditions. There was rubbish thickly spread throughout the house. The toilet and the bath were full of rubbish and not in use. Buckets and pots were used instead.”
Rose claimed she left her kids with a woman named Jade.
As noted in a police news release, Rose claimed that a woman named Jade whom she met “a few days before” was supposed to have been watching her sons on the night of the fire. “Hours of CCTV” were “viewed by officers” – but they “could find no trace of her having met with Jade.”
In a December 2021 statement, Rose said she would “never get over” the deaths of her sons, The Times reported.
