Mom of 2 Sets of Twins Who Died in House Fire After She Left Them Locked Up to Go Shopping Learns Fate

An English mom has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in connection with the 2021 deaths of her four children, who died in a house fire while she was out shopping.

Deveca Rose was sentenced to a decade behind bars on Friday after being found guilty on four counts of manslaughter, the BBC reports.

PEOPLE previously reported that Rose, 30, had left her two sets of twins locked in the house while she went shopping, where they were ultimately trapped when a fire broke out at the family’s Sutton area home in south London.

The Metropolitan Police stated in a news release at the time that the twin brothers Leyton and Logan Hoath, 3, and fellow twins Kyson and Bryson Hoath, 4, were found “unconscious” in an upstairs room and taken to a local hospital, where they were later pronounced dead.

A neighbor “kicked in the front door in an attempt to reach the children” but couldn’t enter after a passerby notified them about the house being on fire, the press release said.

Investigators said the fire is believed to have “started in the living room on the ground floor either by a candle/tealight or a burning cigarette” and spread quickly “due to the floor being strewn with discarded items and rubbish.”

According to the Metropolitan Police, Rose’s children then “fled to an upstairs bedroom where they would be overcome by smoke” as the fire continued. Post-mortem examinations confirmed that the boys died from “inhalation of fire fumes,” PEOPLE reported last October.

Rose had allegedly told police that a woman named “Jade,” whom she met a few days prior to the fire, was supposed to be watching her children while she was shopping. However, police said that throughout their investigation, detectives could not locate a woman who matched the name or description Rose gave them.

“The true position was that you left four boys aged four or under on their own,” Judge Mark Lucraft told Rose at her sentencing, according to BBC.

The judge called the case “deeply tragic” and said the four children were “gone in just a few moments through an intense fire,” BBC reported. The outlet reported Friday that Judge Lucraft said an investigation found that Rose wasn’t doing “essential or vital” shopping the day of the fire.

“You will have to live with the knowledge you bear responsibility for the deaths of your four children,” the judge told her at the sentencing, BBC reported.

The children’s father, Dalton Hoath, said in an impact statement read aloud during the trial that the day his four children died was “the worst day” of his life, according to BBC. “Their lives had only just begun,” the father reportedly said. “It was every parent’s nightmare – I am devastated.”