A coronial inquest has heard a fatal house fire in North Queensland was likely deliberately lit by a man who would have been charged with the murder of his partner had he survived.<\/p>\n
Lizzie Reuben, 47, and Isei Navutovuto, 65, died from burns suffered in a house fire in Ayr, south of Townsville, on August 9, 2022.<\/p>\n
Ms Reuben suffered burns to 97 per cent of her body.<\/p>\n
Mr Navutovuto, who suffered burns to almost 50 per cent of his body, died of multiple organ failure 20 days later in the Royal Brisbane Hospital.<\/p>\n
An inquest into their deaths opened in the Coroner’s Court in Townsville this week.<\/p>\n
The inquest is focused on the actions of Queensland Police officers including those who had been at the property responding to a welfare concern less than an hour before the fire started.<\/p>\n
In the early hours of August 9, 2022, Ms Rueben had called triple-0 and told police she feared her partner, Mr Navutovuto, was attempting suicide in the back shed, but when officers responded, he was asleep inside.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Ayr home was gutted in the blaze. (ABC North Qld: Baz Ruddick)<\/p>\n
Domestic violence history<\/p>\n
Mr Navutovuto had been convicted of domestic violence against her and was subject to a domestic violence order.<\/p>\n
The court heard in the weeks before the fire, Ms Reuben had told her cousin and neighbours that Mr Navutovuto had threatened to burn the house down with her inside.<\/p>\n
Those accounts were given to Detective Senior Sergeant Nathan McCormack, who has overseen the Ethical Standards Command investigation into the police response.<\/p>\n
The detective told the court one neighbour kicked down the front door of the property while it was ablaze after hearing yelling.<\/p>\n
“He saw Mr Navutovuto about 2 metres in front of him, he was running down the hallway, the flame was following him in a direct straight line,” the detective said.<\/p>\n
“He believed Mr Navutovuto was pouring an accelerant.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Other neighbours rendered first aid to Ms Reuben outside.<\/p>\n
“She said to neighbours, ‘He has got a knife, and he is trying to kill me,” Senior Sergeant McCormack said.<\/p>\n
The detective said that before Mr Navutovuto died, police were preparing to charge him.<\/p>\n
“Based on my conversations with Detective Sergeant Shields, if Mr Navutovuto were to have survived his injuries, he would have been charged with homicide,” he said.<\/p>\n
Senior Sergeant McCormack told Deputy State Coroner Stephanie Gallagher the police response was less than optimal, but no misconduct had occurred.<\/p>\n
Constable Monica Stafford, a police officer of five years then, and first-year Constable Ethan Shields both gave evidence to the Coroner’s Court in Townsville on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
They said though Mr Navutovuto had a history of domestic violence, they did not consider Ms Reuben’s triple-0 call on August 9 to be domestic violence-related.<\/p>\n
The inquest continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coronial inquest has heard a fatal house fire in North Queensland was likely deliberately lit by a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,37554,37555,281,4446,32551,11767,37558,5025,37165,37557,37556,50,7207,4798],"class_list":{"0":"post-49499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-burdekin","10":"tag-coroner","11":"tag-court","12":"tag-death","13":"tag-domestic-violence","14":"tag-fatal","15":"tag-fatal-house-fire","16":"tag-fire","17":"tag-inquest","18":"tag-isei-navutovuto","19":"tag-lizzie-reuben","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-police","22":"tag-queensland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114819316381731543","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}