A mother-of-six died holding a photograph of the four children murdered in the Walkden petrol bomb attack, an inquest has heard. Michelle Pearson, 37, spent 21 months fighting for her life after being catastrophically injured in the blaze that killed her children when firebombs were thrown into the family home in December 2017.
As she passed away in hospital, relatives placed a crucifix in her hand and a picture of her four children by her side. “We know that she is back with her children,” a family statement said. The case returned to the spotlight as an inquest into Ms Pearson's death opened at Bolton Coroner's Court.
Family's pleas to council before attack
Her family told the hearing that she had been “pleading with” Salford Council to rehouse her family before the attack amid an increasingly bitter “tit-for-tat feud”. They said she was “beyond stressed”, while her children were “petrified” of remaining at the property on Jackson Street.
The fire claimed the lives of four of her children: Demi, 14, Brandon, eight, Lacie, seven, and Lia, three, after petrol bombs were launched at the house in the early hours of December 11, 2017. Their mother survived, but died aged 37 almost two years later after suffering severe burns and spending months in a coma.
Convictions and inquest proceedings
Zak Bolland and David Worrall, then 23 and 25 respectively, were jailed for life and ordered to serve 40 and 37 years after being convicted of the murders of the children in May 2018. The pair were also found guilty of Michelle's murder at a separate trial in 2021. Courtney Brierley, Bolland's then girlfriend, who had waited in a nearby car while the attack went on, was jailed for 21 years for manslaughter. Brierley admitted manslaughter and received an additional, concurrent, 12-year sentence at the 2021 trial.
Opening the inquest, senior coroner Timothy Brennand read out the sentencing remarks of the trial judge, Mr Justice William Davis. Proceedings are expected to last for eight weeks.
Feud and escalating attacks
Mr Justice Davis described a feud “between some members of the Pearson family and Zac Bolland and Courtney Brierley”. “What lay behind the feud has never been made public,” he explained. Cars had been damaged and Bolland smashed windows of the Pearson home with a hammer, the inquest heard. Bolland was also said to have “threatened to use fire” on the property. Police and the fire service, who sealed up her letterbox, were involved, with Mr Justice Davis detailing a “flurry of tit-for-tat attacks”.
Ms Pearson was then labelled a “grass”, with the word being spray-painted on her home and a wheelie bin set alight in her front garden. A “series of relatively trivial incidents gradually increasing in seriousness which had no conceivable justification, but which could and should have gone no further” unravelled, Mr Justice Davis said.
Attack and aftermath
Bolland and Worrall, fuelled by alcohol and cocaine, armed with an axe and a machete, went to the Pearson home in the early hours to carry out the attack, the inquest heard. They had prepared two petrol bombs, one from a large clear bottle and the other from a beer bottle. The latter smashed a rear window and threw one inside, which ignited “but only to a limited extent”. Bolland's petrol bomb “exploded with considerable force” and the resulting blaze consumed the house.
“The defendants must have known that they had been responsible for setting on fire an occupied house yet they behaved as if nothing had happened,” said the trial judge in her sentencing remarks, with the court also hearing that the fire was “swift and deadly”.
Coroner Mr Brennand laid out how a homicide investigation began, with convictions following. Mr Brennand said the inquest would seek to examine whether there was “any predictable threat to life” and “what could or should have been done that might have prevented these deaths”. Proceedings would scrutinise “how state agencies worked together”, according to the coroner, to manage any risk after Ms Pearson's reports. “The family are at the heart of this process,” he said. “The intention is to give the family a voice.”
Tributes to the children
Family “pen portraits” of the children were read out. Demi was described as a “happy and smiley child with a heart of gold”. She was found near a bunk bed and died at the scene. Brandon was the “brainbox” of the family who was said to have an “amazing vocabulary”. “His favourite word was putrid,” the family said. He was said to pick flowers from the park and loved the Beatles. Lacie loved to dance and was “a YouTube star in the making”, the family said, also paying tribute to Lia as having a “cheeky laugh and a smile that would melt your heart”. Lia died two days later in hospital.
