‘I can’t sleep’: Witness to fire death tells jury of lasting horror

A witness to the house fire that killed Alexis Parkes in 2020 in Brisbane’s north has given evidence in her former partner’s murder trial, telling the jury of his desperate attempts to save her.

Alexis Parkes’ Chermside home was destroyed by the fire that claimed her life. Picture: Sarah Marshall

A court witness has retold the horror of trying to rescue a woman from a burning home sparked by a car fire deliberately lit by her boyfriend.

James Morton Mason has pleaded guilty to arson but not guilty to the murder of his partner Alexis Parkes in February 2020 at Chermside.

Witness Michael Kramarenko, who lived opposite Ms Parkes on Bundal Street, told Brisbane Supreme Court that he woke up to people screaming “your house is on fire” just after 4am on February 5.

Mr Kramarenko said he went over to Ms Parkes house dressed only in his boxer shorts and could see the fire underneath the weatherboard Queenslander style home.

“I ran up the stairs and I started yelling out to Alexis,” he told the jury.

Witness in the James Morton Mason trial Michael Kramarenko leaves the Brisbane Supreme court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

“I yelled out and she came to that window and I said to her you have to get out of the house.

“Then I said how about your back door, go to your back door and that’s when she said to me no James has taken my keys and she couldn’t get out and she asked me to get...get her out.”

He said he unsuccessfully tried to kick in a screen door.

“She kept on asking me to help her,” an emotional Mr Kramarenko said.

He said heat from the fire was starting to get intense and when he heard fire engines coming into the street he “ran out to tell them that Alexis was still in there”.

During cross-examination Mr Kramarenko was asked if his memory was better at the time of the incident than now.

“I’ve never forgotten it...I remember it every single day, every single night. I can’t go to sleep at night because I’m frightened there’s going to be another fire,” he said.

Crown prosecutor Mark Green said a firefighter was able to break into the house and found Ms Parkes on the floor “completely unresponsive”.

Alexis' Parkes, died in hospital after being rescued from a house fire in Chermside in 2020.

Mr Green said when she was found Ms Parkes had keys in her hand.

She was taken to hospital and later died from multiple organ failure due to the effects of the fire, he said.

Mr Green alleged Ms Parkes and Mason had a fight the night before the fire and the following morning he set fire to her car parked underneath the house.

He said the defendant told police he put petrol on a car cover and a tea candle there but he “didn’t intend to hurt her”.

Mr Green said there was no evidence Mason had a set of keys.

Mason’s barrister Simon Lewis asked members of the jury not let their emotions get the better of them.

“It is a case where unfortunately the deceased died in a way that is perhaps a great fear of a lot of people,” he said.

“Just be careful not to jump to conclusions because tragically someone died.”