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Vancouver — When T.J. Etibako jumped out of a cab on the morning of May 15, 2006, he feared the worse, having seen the scorched shell of what had been his family's home as the taxi drew close to the site.
But he wasn't prepared for what he saw on the lawn as he raced to get closer to the door.
“I saw my family's bodies,” Mr. Etibako told a jury in a barely audible voice today during the B.C. Supreme Court murder trial of Nathan Fry.
Mr. Etibako, now 21, told the court he then fainted and had to be revived by a friend.
Mr. Etibako said he had spent the previous day, Mother's Day, with his family. He played with his siblings and gave his mother a bouquet of flowers and a card. He then went out with friends in the evening and was not at home in the pre-dawn hours when a fire ripped through the three-storey townhouse where the rest of his family was sleeping.
The fire killed five people, including four members of the Etibako family, who'd come to Canada in 1997 from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mr. Fry has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. He has pleaded not guilty. The crown alleges Mr. Fry set the fires to get back at Bolingo Etibako, T.J.'s brother, for implicating Mr. Fry in stabbings that took place in 2005.
A Vancouver police officer testified that she arrived at the scene to see a young man sitting on the grass in front of the home in an east Vancouver housing complex.
The man was screaming and crying about his family, Constable Caroline Wigglesworth testified.
His skin appeared to be melting off his face and skin was “literally dripping” off his arms, Constable Wigglesworth said.
“Every part of his exposed skin was melted or burned, it appeared,” she said.
Bolingo Etibako was in the home at the time of the fire but escaped by jumping from a second-storey window. He was seriously burned and spent weeks in the hospital. He is expected to testify in the trial.
In his testimony, T.J. said he was a student before the fire.
After the fire, he dropped out of school, began drinking more alcohol and became troubled by nightmares and a fear of the dark.
“When I saw my sisters' room, it was totally burned. Everything was just black, black, black,” he said in court. “Ever since that day, whenever I close my eyes all I can see is that black.”
