Three killed by man’s actions

Press, 23 July 1987, Page 5

Three killed by man’s actions

PA Wellington A man stabbed his former de facto wife and then set fire to her, police told the Coroner’s Court at Wellington. Smoke from a fire in the woman’s flat caused by the man’s attack overcame and killed the woman’s two children. In a joint inquest into the deaths of Tania Marie Thomson, a solo mother, and her two infants, Mishana Karen Thomson, aged nine months, and Kylie Frances Thomson, aged three, the Coroner, Mr Alex Protheroe, found Tania Thomson died of stab wounds, and her two children from smoke inhalation.

Detective Sergeant Ronald Chatt, of the Porirua C. 1.8., told the Court that Duane Mark Shaw had gone to Miss Thomson’s Linden flat on the night of August 10 last year.

Shaw had been living

with her in a de facto relationship until a few days before. He enlisted the help of an unsuspecting neighbour to gain entry to the flat.

Shaw forced Miss Thomson back into the flat by holding a slug gun to her head. In her bedroom, Shaw stabbed her three times and cut her face and neck. Shaw poured an accelerant on her and set fire to her.

“The examination of Tania Thomson’s body showed a blood carbon monoxide level of 20 per cent, indicating that she had lived for a short period of time while she was on fire,” Detective Sergeant Chatt said. On November 21, 1986, in the High Court at Wellington, Shaw was found guilty of the murder of the two children and was sentenced to life imprisonment, Detective Sergeant Chatt said.