Told you next time you leave, house goes up with me. Boom': Chilling message sent by man jailed for 10 years for killing boy, 2, in huge gas blast

A man who blew up his house when his girlfriend left him, killing his neighbours’ two-year-old boy, was jailed for ten years yesterday.
Unemployed joiner Andrew Partington, 28, sawed through gas pipes then sent his girlfriend a text message warning ‘gas pipe cut, already filled up, boom’.
The following morning, Partington lit a cigarette, igniting the gas and causing a huge explosion. Toddler Jamie Heaton, who had been watching his favourite television programme, Peppa Pig, was killed next door.
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Jamie Heaton, two, who died in an explosion in Oldham when his house went up in a massive gas blast

Andrew Partington (right) was jailed for 10 years over the death of toddler Jamie Heaton (left)

His distraught mother Michelle escaped injury only because she was outside hanging up washing.
A passing policeman crawled through the rubble to reach Jamie, but he had already been crushed to death.

 

Partington was pulled from the wreckage of his house in Shaw, near Oldham, with 40 per cent burns and a broken back. He admitted manslaughter.
Jailing him at Manchester Crown Court, Mr Justice Hamblen said his reckless actions had in effect produced ‘a bomb that you created and detonated’, killing Jamie and wrecking the lives of his parents.
Afterwards Mrs Heaton and her car salesman husband Kenny, 37, said: ‘No sentence imposed would ever bring Jamie back nor would it ever give us satisfaction.’

The court heard Andrew Partington (left) and Tanya Williams had a stormy relationship

Aerial picture of the scene of the gas explosion which flattened three houses in the Shaw area of Oldham, Greater Manchester

Emergency workers at the scene of the gas blast in the Shaw area of Oldham, Greater Manchester

Jamie, who had been diagnosed with autism, should have been at nursery on the day of the blast last June but was poorly. Mrs Heaton, 32, stayed home from her job at Boots to look after him.
Hard-drinking Partington and his girlfriend, Tanya Williams, had moved in four months before the blast.
He regularly beat her and shortly before the explosion had been given a conditional discharge for common assault. Miss Williams, 28, has five children, the two youngest by Partington, who has a daughter from a previous relationship.
On June 25, the court heard, Partington had been drinking heavily and rowed with Miss Williams, calling her ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’.
She left, taking the children. Partington bombarded her with angry messages from his BlackBerry phone.
One read: ‘Told you next time you leave me, house goes up with me. You left your kids with no Dad, no home, goodbye, boom, gas pipe cut, already filled up, boom.’ He also called her a ‘bitch’ and said he loved his two sons by her.
Partington, who had cut the gas pipes in two places, then apparently fell into a drunken stupor.

The cut gas pipe in the house of Andrew Partington that caused the blast

Andrew Partington was sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter and destruction of property

Tragic: Michelle Heaton, the mother of Jamie Heaton, two, with a picture of her son

Jamie had been watching television in the lounge with his mother doing housework and his father out at work

The following morning, the defence claimed, he changed his mind, turned off the gas and opened windows.
National Grid was alerted to the leak after a neighbour reporting a smell of gas at 10.42am. Engineers were minutes from the scene when at about 11.15am Partington lit a cigarette, causing the catastrophic explosion that police said left the street ‘like a war zone’. It was ‘sheer luck’ that no one else was killed or seriously injured.
The external wall of Partington’s end-of-terrace home was torn from its foundations, slamming into the Heatons’ house, from which it was separated by an alley, and causing the roof to cave in.
Mrs Heaton told how her first thought was that her son would be terrified by the deafening blast.
‘I knew Jamie would be frightened, but I couldn’t get back in the back door,’ she said.
The Heatons – who also have a son, Jack, nine, and daughter Jodie, five – said of Jamie: ‘He was a beautiful, healthy and loving little boy who was full of life. Above all he was great fun.

Kenny and Michelle Heaton arrive at Manchester Crown Court for the trial of gas fitter Andrew Partington. The couple's son Jamie died in a gas explosion at their home in Oldham last year

‘The fact that [the explosion] was deliberate and totally avoidable has made the grieving ever harder to manage.’
They have set up a charity, Jamie’s Something Special, in his memory to raise funds for children’s play equipment.
Several other families lost homes and possessions in the blast, which damaged seven houses beyond repair and left an estimated bill of £1.2million.
A fund to support victims of the blast has so far paid out £207,000 to 91 households.
Partington admitted eight charges of destroying houses and received concurrent seven-year sentences for each.