Dylane Shaw died on November 2, 2020, after a fire was set at the Cosham BP petrol station.
Known to her friends as Dee, the 53-year-old Sixth Avenue mom has been described by family members as ‘caring’, ‘kind’ and ‘creative’.
Dylane’s family did not attend the inquest, a decision Senior Coroner Christopher Wilkinson said was understandable as “this has been a very difficult event for your children”.
The Portsmouth Coroner’s Court heard that on November 1, 2020, Dylane arrived at the petrol station in a minibus taxi.
Then he filled a drum with gasoline, with which he set himself on fire in the garage esplanade.
In a statement read in court, pump manager Palanisami Mahendran said he was the only member of staff in the garage at the time.
Although he saw the black cab pull up, he was serving another customer, so he “didn’t pay much attention to it.”
Palanisami said he saw a woman ‘carrying a green gasoline can’ get out of the vehicle and walk over to a pump where she filled the can.
He said: ‘The next thing I knew, the woman was engulfed in flames. She was waving her arms around her. I ran from behind the box to the front yard.
Several people ran to help, bringing fire extinguishers to put out the flames.
Richard Goodall, known as Darren, is one of the witnesses who came to Dylane’s aid.
After seeing the flames, he “just ran straight at the person,” ripping off his shirt to try to put out the fire.
He said: ‘I could see that the person was in very bad shape.’
“It was only 45 seconds, but it felt like an eternity.”
Darren, who suffered a minor burn to his arm, said the heat emanating from Dylane “almost pushed [him] back’.
The coroner told Darren: ‘We underestimated the impact this had on other people.
Not everyone would run into danger. You should be congratulated for what you did that morning. You did the best you could do.
Paramedic Christopher Buglass was in a nearby ambulance at the time and assisted the patient at the scene before taking her to the ambulance.
Christopher spoke to Dylane as they traveled to the QA hospital and recalls the patient saying she had set herself on fire “in an attempt to silence the demons and voices in her head.”
After she was transferred to a specialist burn unit in Wales, doctors determined that as Dylane had sustained deep skin burns to 86 per cent of her total body surface area, her injuries were “irritating”.
He passed away in the early hours of November 2, 2020 at Morriston Hospital in Swansea.
Dylane had a long history of mental health problems, having been sectioned twice, and evidence from NHS Solent Trust services was heard in court today.
They said that she often did not participate in the services’ attempts to communicate with her and sometimes did not take her medication.
While Dylane’s family feels more should have been done to help her, the coroner said: “I don’t see much more that mental health services could have done.”
After quitting heroin cold turkey, Harry Shaw, one of Dylane’s sons, said in a written statement that his mother had developed an interest in “paranormal research” and “life after death.”
He noted, “Mom had been struggling with her mental health for years.”
As Dylane developed her interest in “psychic communication,” she began using a spirit box, a device, PC Sam Winmill noted in his statement, that “seemed to do [her mental health] worse’.
The court also heard testimony from the police officers involved that day, as well as from other witnesses.
In his closing statement, the coroner said: “Dee Shaw took her own life while suffering from severe depression and manic-like schizophrenic disorder.”
Shortly after Dylane passed away, her family faced further horror when video footage of the gas station incident, recorded on a phone with CCTV footage, circulated on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.
Hampshire Police PSI Sophie Close was involved in the investigation into the circulation of the footage, which was launched after members of the public alerted police that they were “disturbed” by the video.
Sophie told the court that the images were removed from the sites they were shared on, and her team tried to establish who had posted the video online.
Two recordings of the CCTV footage were made: one was created by a garage manager, who said he had been instructed by his company to record the footage to train future staff, something police “strongly discouraged”. This video was not shared online.
Another staff member also recorded video footage, which was shared with some colleagues and some friends for “awareness purposes”. This was the video that was shared online.
Sophie said that while “it is extremely morally wrong to have done this”, the police “could not meet the points to prove a criminal offence” and the investigation was closed.
On the subject of the shared images, the coroner said the decision to post the video online was “extremely offensive”: “I’m quite horrified. One would have hoped that this would never have happened.
“It’s incredibly upsetting for the family.”
Harry said, “I’ve been trying to get over this horrible part of my life.”
He added that the ‘vile’ video: ‘will haunt me for the rest of my life’.
