A JURY has begun considering its verdicts in the trial of two men and a woman accused of murdering four children in an arson attack on their Walkden home.

Following three weeks of harrowing evidence at Manchester Crown Court the judge, Mr Justice Willam Davis, spent this morning summing up the case for the jury of five women and seven men and sent them out to start making their deliberations just before lunchtime.

He told them: "I think I said at the start, this was a case that's bound to raise emotions and plainly has done.

"Of course you will have at the back of your mind the result of all this, but your assessment of the evidence must be dispassionate."

During the trial the court heard how Demi Pearson, aged 15 and her siblings Brandon, aged eight and Lacie, seven, died at the terraced house in Jackson Street on December 11.

They were upstairs in the property when lit petrol bombs were thrown inside through a kitchen window, setting the ground floor ablaze and had no chance of escape.

Their sister, three-year-old Lia, was rescued by firefighters but died in hospital three days later and the children’s mother, Michelle Pearson, was badly hurt, spending several weeks in a coma.

She remains in hospital and was unable to take part in the trial of Zak Bolland, aged 23, of Blackleach Drive, Walkden, David Worrall, aged 26, of no fixed address and Courtney Brierley, aged 20, of Worsley Avenue, Little Hulton.

All three are on trial for the murder of the four children plus the attempted murders of 36-year-old Mrs Pearson, her 17-year-old son Kyle Pearson and 17-year-old family friend Bobby Harris, who escaped the fire by climbing out of a window.

During the trial the court heard that the arson attack was the result of an ongoing feud between Bolland and Kyle Pearson.

In the early hours of the morning Bolland, along with Worrall, removed a fence panel from the garden at the back of the Pearsons’ home.

The kitchen window was smashed, blind slashed and then two lit petrol bombs were thrown into the three-bedroom property, one landing in the kitchen and the other in the living room, with the resulting flames blocking escape down the staircase.

Bolland admitted throwing the petrol bombs but claimed he thought the property was unoccupied at the time. The jury were told that Kyle Pearson, who managed to escape from the building by climbing onto a canopy above the front door, looked up and saw a light from his sister, Dami’s mobile phone before she coughed in thick smoke and fell away from the window.

Until a few weeks before the attack on the house Bolland and Kyle Pearson had been friends.

But, around November 25 last year Bolland’s Ford Focus was set alight and he blamed the teenager for it. Bolland wanted him to pay £500 and sent text messages demanding the cash.

Both sides then began a series of tit for tat attacks, breaking windows in each others homes and Bolland threatened to fire bomb Kyle’s house.

The threat led Mrs Pearson to call police and, as a result, the fire service fitted a cover to the letter box. Two days before the fatal fire her bin was set alight and the word “grass” spray-painted on her house.

On December 10 Bolland, his girlfriend Courtney Brierley and Worrall spend the day drinking before the two men went to Jackson Street and Bolland is alleged to have shouted: “Watch, all your family’s getting it, they’re all gonna die.”

Police were called and Kyle Pearson was so worried that Bolland and Worrall would return that took a door, not attached to its frame, and wedged it behind the front door.

Bolland and Worrall were seen going to a petrol station in Farnworth where they bought £1.50 worth of fuel and used it to make petrol bombs.

Accompanied by Brierley, in a car driven by Abigail Toone, they parked up a street away from the Pearsons’ home.

The two women waited in the car while Bolland and Worrall went to the house.

Giving evidence in his own defence Bolland said he had been drunk and high on cocaine.

“I did set the fire but I didn’t mean to harm anybody,” he said.

Worrall admitted he had been with Bolland but said he assumed they were only going to set fire to bins. He claimed he ran off when he saw Bolland lighting the first petrol bomb.

Brierley told the jury that her relationship with Bolland was “toxic” and he was violent towards her.