Three people were asleep when Shepparton house set alight in arson attack

Both also pleaded guilty to a summary charge of committing an indictable offence while on bail.

Prosecutor Charlotte Duckett told the court Liam and Luke Brown both went to an Olympic Ave home shortly after 7.45am on July 5, 2020, where Liam used a propane blowtorch on a television in a bedroom while one of the house’s occupants slept only metres away.

In video footage shown to the court, Luke stood with Liam as Liam held the blowtorch to the television, attempting to ignite it.

The court was told Liam then went to the front bedroom of the house — that no-one was in at the time — and set a fire there.

Ms Duckett said the two men and one woman who were asleep in the house at the time were only woken when a neighbour bashed on the door five minutes later after seeing smoke coming from the house.

The three escaped uninjured, but the house had to be demolished.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the woman said the crime had “permanently scarred me” and that she was “always in a state of panic”.

She spoke of leaving Shepparton because she feared for her safety, as well as how she had “lost basically everything I owned” in the fire.

The court was told that the Brown brothers’ mother had died only days before the arson attack.

In a sentencing conversation with First Nations Elders in court, Liam said he was on drugs at the time of the fire but had since gone “cold turkey”.

The court also heard from an employer on a solar farm he worked at for two months, telling of his good work ethic.

In his conversation with the Elders, Luke told how he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the fire and was now “shattered” about the fire.

He said he now tried not to drink alcohol.

Liam’s barrister David Rofe said his client was exposed to drugs while relatively young, first using cannabis and later methamphetamines when he was 16.

He said there had been a lessening of drug use from about the age of 19, but when Liam and Luke’s mother died, he used MDMA and alcohol for days afterwards in the lead-up to the fire.

He said his client had ADHD, Tourette Syndrome, Major Depressive Disorder and Substance Abuse Disorder.

Mr Rofe said the fire lighting was “out of character” for Liam and that changes he had made in the four years since the fire meant he had “good prospects of rehabilitation”.

Mr Rofe urged the judge to sentence Liam to a long community corrections order, with a large amount of community work.

Luke’s barrister Daniel McGlone told the court the Brown brothers had been drinking from the Friday afternoon when their mother’s body was removed from her house, through to Sunday when the fire was lit.

He said the Browns were “friends” with the two men in the house.

He said Luke went to the Olympic Ave house because he was “trying to keep an eye on his brother” and they were “trying to deal with the loss of their mother”.

Mr McGlone also asked for a community corrections order for his client.

The prosecutor, however, said she didn’t “understand the link between the grieving process and setting alight someone’s house”.

Ms Duckett said the prospects of rehabilitation of both men “relied on their ability to remain free of substance abuse” and asked that Liam be sentenced to prison and said Luke could receive a sentence that combined prison and a community corrections order.

“These people were asleep in a house. They had to wake up and run out the back door,” she said.

The matter will come back to court in about 10 weeks.