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Teen testifies suspect banged on door before fatal fire

E-mail|Link|Comments () February 3, 2010 01:30 PM

By Milton Valencia, Globe Staff

The teenage brother of the two young girls who died in a South Boston fire two years ago testified today that he heard his mother’s lover just before the blaze, banging on the door and calling his mother a whore.

Nicole Chuminski

Raymond Johnson Jr., now 16, said that he went back to sleep, only to wake soon afterward to what sounded like glass breaking. Still, he thought nothing of it – until his mother, Anna Reisopolous, awoke him again, screaming at him to get out, that the house was on fire.

His sisters, 14-year-old Acia Johnson, his twin, and Sophia, 3, were trapped on the third floor. Once in the back yard, he looked up to see if he could see them in a rear window, but saw nothing.

“There was smoke coming out of the window,” Johnson said.

The teenager’s testimony, sharp and direct, came on the third day in the trial of Nicole Chuminski, now 27, who is charged with setting the fire after a fight with Reisopolous, her lover of a few months.

Earlier today, Chuminski’s cousin, Lisa Walsh, testified that she had driven Chuminski and Reisopolous to a relative’s wedding in Weymouth, and that Chuminski had been excited about the event and had dressed up.

But things turned ugly when Reisopolous was accused of stealing a wallet of a relative at the wedding. Chuminski yelled at Reisopolous. Walsh urged Chuminski to hit Reisopolous.

Reisopolous left alone. According to testimony in court, Chuminski went to a bar in Weymouth, and left at about 1:30 a.m.

The fire, which firefighters testified burned with an unusual intensity, started just after 3 a.m.