Two men are to be sentenced today for murder arising from the burning death of three children in a house at Port Henderson Lane, St Catherine on September 14, 2004.

A Home Circuit Court jury retired for more than two hours before convicting fishermen Rohan 'Pig Seed' McCarty and Ricardo 'Blacks' Britton, both of Port Henderson Lane, of the triple murder.

bottle torch

The Crown, represented by Ann Marie Feurtado-Richards, assistant deputy director of public prosecutions, led evidence that on September 14, 2004, the men threw gasoline around Pansy Henry's three-bedroom wooden house and used a bottle torch to set it ablaze.

Henry said about 1:15 a.m., she heard something like liquid being poured around her house. She looked through a window and saw the two accused. She said McCarty had a bottle torch and threw it on her house. She said she called the men by their alias and they ran.

She said when the house caught fire, her five-year-old twin boys Tyrique and Tyrone and her three-year-old daughter Moesha Lee, were burnt to death.

She said the day before she had a dispute with the men and they threatened to burn her out.

Investigations by Detective Inspector Leighton Blackstock and Detective Sergeant Victor Smith led to the men's arrests.

The men denied being involved in the incident. They said they were sleeping when they heard the house was on fire.

They were convicted of committing murders in the furtherance of arson to a dwelling house.