A 15-year-old boy who killed his little brother by setting fire to the family home as revenge for being grounded, was sentenced to at least ten years imprisonment today.
Matthew Stringer, who was 14 at the time, had been caught stealing thousands of pounds from his older brother and was angry at the punishment dished out by his family who had also confiscated his Xbox computer console.
Stringer poured white spirit in the hall and stairway of his house in Wombwell, near Barnsley, before igniting the fire with a match. Sheffield Crown Court heard that he watched “impassively” as his panicked family tried to escape the house.
His mother, sister, two elder brothers and one of their girlfriends, who was six months pregnant, were forced to jump from upstairs windows to escape the blaze. One of the older brothers broke both his ankles and his badly burned mother spent a number of months in hospital as a result of the fire on November 3 last year.
In the rush to flee the burning building nobody noticed that the youngest brother Adam was still in his room. His body was found by firefighters in his badly charred bed, he died of smoke inhalation while sleeping under the covers still wearing his brand new headphones.
The court heard that Stringer’s behaviour had deteriorated in the months leading up to the fire. In October he told a friend at school that he was planning to burn down his house to kill his mother after she had grounded him.
Since his parents separated in August 2005, Matthew Stringer had lit fires in a skip, a field and a garden shed. He had also used a cigarette lighter to cause burns to his hands.
