Mother wakes up from a coma to face tragic news of the death of her four children in a house fire
A 36-year-old woman from Manchester woke up from her coma recently to find out that all her four children were dead in an alleged arson attack on their home, according to reports. The mother, Michelle Pearson, reportedly was not aware of her children's death for over four months because she was placed in a medically-induced coma by the doctors after the fire broke out in her home in Walkden, Greater Manchester in December, according to the Daily Mail.
Shortly after the fire, emergency services were called to the family's home after 5 am on December 11. The officials, however, could not save the children inside the home. The blaze took the lives of Demi Pearson, 14, Brandon, eight, Lacie, seven, and Lia, three.
The incident was deemed as an arson attack and the convicted suspects — Zak Bolland, 23, Courtney Brierley, 20, and David Worrall, 25 — last month, pleaded not guilty in court to killing the four children in the attack.
Greater Manchester Police on Wednesday revealed that the news of her children's death was broken to Pearson some time ago. However, it was only "within the past two weeks" that she understood what exactly had happened that day in December last year.
The senior investigating officer in the arson attack case, Detective chief Inspector Lewis Hughes, said: "Michelle is making good progress in ICU. She is now able to communicate and to eat and drink, which is fantastically good news."
Hughes, however, added: "She won’t be able to take part in the trial and is going to be in the hospital for a very long time to come." The officer added that Pearson, over the last few months, had shown signs of regaining consciousness.
"But it is only within the past fortnight that she has become sufficiently lucid to understand that four of her children have died. Previous to that she has been told several times, but was unable to understand or digest the information.
"She remains heavily sedated but lucid and is speaking to surviving members of her family," the officer said, according to Daily Mail.
The officer refused to divulge more details about Pearson's injuries and only added that she had suffered "severe burns" in the incident.