A New Zealand jury convicted a man of murder and arson Friday for setting the fire at the boarding house where he lived that killed five fellow tenants.
The jury at the High Court in Wellington reached the verdicts against Esarona David Lologa after less than three days of deliberations, rejecting the defense of insanity argued by Lologa’s lawyers.
Lologa, 50, had been granted name suppression throughout the five-week trial, but the order was lifted when he was convicted.
Prosecutors accepted Lologa had schizophrenia when he twice set fires inside the 92-bed hostel over one night in May 2023. They said he lit the fatal blaze not because of his mental illness but because he wanted to seek a transfer to other accommodation.
The jury rejected an insanity defense
Lologa’s lawyers didn’t deny that their client lit the fires, but they said he was not guilty by reason of insanity. In New Zealand, this meant the jury must accept the defendant was incapable of understanding that his actions were wrong.
His lawyers said there was no evidence that he’d set the fires because he wanted to live elsewhere, but prosecutors said Lologa had told people he didn’t like living at the boarding house, which was called Loafers Lodge, and wanted to move elsewhere.
Lologa first set a couch in a communal area ablaze late one evening, prompting an evacuation of the building. After residents put out the fire, he returned and placed cushions and a blanket in a cupboard before setting them alight.
He left the building without raising the alarm or calling emergency services. During the trial, the court heard recordings of desperate phone calls to the fire department from people trapped inside and accounts from tenants, including one man who jumped from a window to escape the blaze.
In a police interview played for the jury, the man denied setting the fires, despite officers telling him he had been seen on security camera footage doing so, RNZ reported.
Older and disabled men were among the victims
Some of the boarding house residents included social services clients and older, disabled and otherwise vulnerable people, as well as nurses working at a nearby hospital. The burned-out building remains standing in the district of Newtown, near the central city of New Zealand’s capital.
The residents who died included colorful and well-known Wellington identities. Michael Wahrlich was a veteran busker who juggled tennis balls and Liam Hockings’ daily foot tours of the area made him a familiar face to locals. The other three victims were Kenneth Barnard, Peter O’Sullivan and Melvin Parun.
Murder carries a mandatory life sentence in New Zealand, with judges required to set a prison term of at least 10 years before an offender can apply for parole. Arson carries a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
Lologa will be sentenced in November.
Others still face trial for manslaughter
Authorities filed manslaughter charges in June against four other people who law enforcement said were responsible for the boarding house’s management and operation, including aspects of the fire safety system. During Lologa’s trial, some of the 100 witnesses called by prosecutors said the building was a death trap, according to New Zealand news outlets.
The four accused all deny the charges. A trial date hasn’t been set.
The deaths provoked outrage in New Zealand about the dilapidated and often unregulated state of boarding houses, which mostly accommodate low-income people with few options. Officials said at the time that the residence had no fire sprinklers and building codes did not require installation of sprinklers in older buildings that would need to be retrofitted.
Dozens of old boarding houses like Loafers Lodge were discovered to have no sprinklers, officials found, and many did not have working smoke detection systems. The fire provoked a suite of reviews and inquiries, though no legal changes have been made.
One lawmaker is seeking cross-party support for a bill to establish a register for boarding houses and their owners and mandate recordkeeping.
