Two women suffered horrific facial burns when a heater exploded into a fireball after a friend squirted fuel onto it, a court has heard.
April Charlesworth, 31, is said to have been left with agonising injuries to her neck, hands and face while celebrating her 28th birthday at the Kings Head pub in Great Cornard, Suffolk.
The videographer had been at the pub with her cousin, Ashleigh Charlesworth, 32, and friends when Dale Carter allegedly squirted the flammable liquid on a tabletop heater.
Ashleigh, a former children’s nurse, was taken to hospital with burns to her chest, face and hands and was put on a ventilator after her airway started to swell, jurors were told.
Carter, 30, denies two offences of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Ipswich Crown Court heard the outing on April 24, 2021 was the cousins’ first night out after the Covid lockdown and they were sitting at tables in the pub car park with the rest of their group.
It was a cold evening and April’s brother, Sam, had gone to their mother’s home nearby and returned with a tabletop heater and a bottle of ethanol.
He lit the heater and is said to have put the bottle of fuel in a bag before briefly leaving the area where everyone was sitting.
When he returned he heard screaming and saw flames on the table and realised his sister and cousin were badly injured, the court was told.
Giving evidence, Mr Charlesworth claimed he’d warned Carter about having to be careful with the heater and fuel because of the danger of a fireball.
He said he had joked with the defendant about ‘not setting anybody on fire’ and claimed Carter had waved his hand through the flame twice and said he was ‘Iron Man’.
Cross-examined by Michael Epstein, who is representing Carter, Mr Charlesworth denied leaving the bottle of ethanol on the table or that he was mistaken about his warning to the defendant about being careful with the heater and fuel.
Witness Mark Lawrence described how he saw Carter put fuel on the heater from a bottle on the table.
The first time there was a flame that flashed a foot out of the device and then disappeared.
The second time he did it, the flame was sucked into the bottle, causing the bottle to explode and turn into ‘a rocket’, as well as setting light to the table.
Danny Wheeler, another witness, said that on the second occasion Carter squirted fuel on the heater the lid and end of the bottle were blown off, resulting in a fire which set light to Carter’s hair and people’s clothes.
During his questioning of witnesses, Mr Epstein acknowledged the horror of the incident but described it as a ‘freak accident’.
Ashleigh was working as a nurse but has been forced to become a clinician for the NHS 111 service due to her injuries, the court heard.
April, a mother-of-one, said previously: ‘It was difficult to readjust to normal life. It still is.
‘I still don’t like going out by myself, it completely changed me as a person even now.
‘It’s ok to have bad days, I still have bad days. It’s important to accept hard times – it does get better.’
The trial continues.
