A 50-year-old man, who has name suppression, is accused of murdering five people by setting Wellington's Loafers Lodge hostel alight in 2023. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
The High Court in Wellington has heard from a Loafers Lodge resident trapped by smoke and the firefighter who saved his life, as the trial reaches the final day of its first week.
A 50-year-old-man, who has name suppression, is accused of murdering five people by setting Loafers Lodge boarding hostel alight in May, 2023.
His lawyers have indicated they will use the defence of insanity.
Firefighter Hayden Moncrieff told the court on Friday morning he was part of a crew from Newtown which was called out just after midnight on 16 May.
He could see smoke coming from the third floor from outside the building, and when he entered, he was met with thick black smoke and intense heat.
Firefighters called for more hose, and Moncrieff and a colleague were tasked with searching the fourth floor of the lodge for trapped residents.
The smoke was "thick and black", Moncrieff said, and firefighters broke a window in the stairwell to let some of it out.
In one bedroom on the fourth floor, Moncrieff found an elderly man by his window, looking out.
He said he was awake, but was not responding to questions - which the court would later learn was because he is deaf.
Moncrieff said he asked him to take a deep breath, and he and a colleague took his hands and led him between them in a chain through the smoke, which was by now reaching from the ceiling down to his waist, to leave the building.
The court then heard from John Te Pania.
He told the court he thought he was done for, and he is very grateful to the men who saved his life.
He said that night, he woke up to the smell of smoke. He had not heard a fire alarm, but acknowledged he might not have because his hearing aid wasn't in.
He made three attempts to leave the room and escape down the stairs, but it was too hot and there was too much smoke coming up from third floor below, where the fire had started.
He jammed some towels in the crack under the door, went to his open window, and waited.
The smoke was having an effect. "I was getting dopey. Just like being on drugs. Oh boy, I was going all wonky."
When Crown lawyer Grant Burston asked him what he was thinking, Te Pania's words were: "Gone. Bye-bye."
"I was thinking about the Twin Towers over in America. I'm too old to smash the window and jump out... or stay in there and choke. That was the only options I had, I think.
"I don't know what I would have done if the firemen hadn't come in."
Moncrieff appeared in the doorway, he said, and then disappeared, but came back with a colleague.
"I'd been in there a long time," Te Pania said. "If they didn't come in, I think I was a goner, one way or the other."
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