A YOUNG jockey who survived a fire which killed two friends told a jury that one of the victims was “calling for help” at a window.

Dean Pratt said he was standing beside 19-year-old Jan Wilson at a window of the blazing flat in Norton.

Moments later he said he was left with “no choice” but to dive head-first to the ground below.

The blaze claimed the lives of apprentice jockeys Jamie Kyne, 18, and Miss Wilson.

Mr Pratt told Leeds Crown Court he could not remember hitting the ground and suffered a cut on his chin and a broken bone in his left hand. It is alleged that father-of-one Peter Brown, 37, lit a fire in the communal entrance to the block of flats.

Prosecutors said a drunken Brown set fire to the Buckrose Court complex as an act of “revenge” after he was refused entry to a party in September last year.

Mr Pratt told the court he had been staying on the sofa in a flat occupied by Mr Kyne, Ian Brennan and his girlfriend, Miss Wilson. He said he was woken by Mr Brennan, who alerted him to the fire and told him to get out.

He told the jury the flat was full of “thick smoke”, and he could just make out Mr Brennan and the living room door.

He was beaten back by the flames as he opened the front door and recalled Miss Wilson standing by a window.

When asked what she was she doing, he replied: “She was calling for help. I was standing beside her.”

Asked by prosecuting counsel Richard Mansell QC what was going through his mind, he said: “I just had to get out. I was finding it hard to breathe. I had no choice. I let myself fall out of the window.”

Mr Brennan, 20, said he shook his friend Mr Kyne awake as smoke was coming under the flat’s front door. He said: “He kind of half fell out of bed. I half grabbed him. He opened his eyes.

“Then the room filled with black smoke. You couldn’t see a thing. I started coughing. I ran back to the door then jumped to the ground.”

As there was clearer air at ground level, he crawled on hands and knees along a wall into his own bedroom, where he jumped from the window. He said he was panicking. A man who had got out of the flat below his broke his fall.

Mr Brennan said after he escaped, he cried out that Miss Wilson and Mr Kyne were still in the flat.

Brown tried twice to get into the flats, but did not succeed. Then Brown hugged him, allegedly saying: “We will find out who did this.” Brown, 37, of School Croft, Brotherton, near Selby, denies two charges of murder, two charges of manslaughter and one charge of arson with intent to endanger life.

The trial continues.


Memorial to victim

AN award for young horse riders has been launched in memory of a jockey tragically killed in a fire at her North Yorkshire home.

The Jan Wilson Memorial Award will remember the young jockey who died along with fellow apprentice Jamie Kyne last September, and would have turned 20 tomorrow.

Funded by the Jockey Jan Memorial Fund, set up by her parents, it will go to a young rider aged between 14 and15 competing in Northern and Scottish based fixtures of the Charles Owen Pony Racing Series.

Margaret Wilson, Jan’s mother, said: “It was important to me that the award is something Jan would have wanted to win herself and I am sure she will be watching down on these young riders following their dream like Jan did. This is for Jan.”