A man accused of setting his western Sydney home alight, burning his wife to death inside her bedroom, repeatedly pushed her into the flames and tried to stop his young son from opening the door, a jury has heard.
The trial of the 45-year-old man, referred to as AKB for legal reasons, began in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday after he earlier pleaded not guilty to her murder in 2016.
Crown prosecutor Christopher Maxwell QC said he expected the jury would hear evidence the couple’s eldest son woke up and went to his mother’s bedroom door, where his father was pulling it back so he “couldn’t open it” and “kept pushing her” into the fire.
He said AKB was responsible for the blaze, “deliberately lit by introduction of petrol” into the room.
“Very quickly, it became an inferno and she was burned to death,” Mr Maxwell said.
Citing a lengthy police interview, to be aired during proceedings, the prosecutor said the boy told officers his parents had been fighting for a week over use of the mobile chat application Viber.
The prosecutor said a man would be called to give evidence that he met the victim on a dating site 11 days before her death, chatted to her over Viber and was in an “intimate relationship” with her for some of that time.