Pensioner 'screamed out the window' when home set on fire

The daughter of a pensioner whose home was set on fire in an arson attack has said she will never get the image out of her head of her mother "screaming out the window".

Michelle Farara rushed to try to help rescue her 72-year-old mother after the blaze was started in Rathglynn in Antrim on Tuesday.

Wilma Farara, who is deaf, is in a coma in intensive care.

"We ran round to the back of the house and my mum was screaming out the window 'help me, help me' she couldn't get out," Michelle said.

"She was up the stairs, she's deaf, her eyes are badly damaged. Can you imagine how scared she was up there on her own?"

Michelle and her partner received a call about the fire shortly after 03:00 GMT.

A bin had been set alight and placed at the front door of the property.

A neighbour saw what happened and phoned emergency services.

"I can't thank my mum's neighbour Bernadette enough," Michelle said.

"If it wasn't for her seeing that fire starting, five more minutes and my mum wouldn't be alive today."

She said Wilma was in a critical condition in hospital.

"Her eyes are badly burned, her lips are swollen, her lungs are full of soot, she can't breathe on her own, she's in an induced coma," she said.

"She is really bad. We'll be very lucky if we get her back out of the hospital alive."

Michelle also under went surgery for six hours after she cut an artery and a tendon in her arm while trying to rescue her mum.

She broke a window to try to get inside the property while her partner tried to climb the drainpipe before the fire service arrived and brought Wilma out of the property.

"I just wanted in to save her, to get her out," she said.

Michelle said her partner went inside and took four breaths but was beaten back by the flames.

"I got out of the hospital yesterday and it was the first time I saw my mum," she said.

"I have never seen anything like it. She has tubes everywhere, she can't breathe on her own. She's not the same woman lying up there.

"I hope whoever's done this feels guilty for the rest of their lives. They need to bring themselves forward."

Michelle said she doesn't know why anyone would target her mother who, she said, was "the nicest person".

"I know people say that all the time but my mum really was," she said.

"Everybody always had a kind word to say about her. I just don't understand how somebody could do this."

Michelle has asked anyone with camera footage in the Parkhall and Stiles area of Antrim of a person with a scarf on their face at about the same time as the arson attack to contact police.

Officers are treating the incident as as arson with intent.