Senior Constable Narelle Taylor was one of the first police officers on scene the night Darren Reid, 45, suffered fatal burns at his home in Derwent Drive, Long Gully on December 18, 2016.

Mr Reid’s partner, Kate Stone, has pleaded not guilty to his murder.

On Thursday, Senior Constable Taylor said Ms Stone told her the attacker’s name was Jason Baxter when she spoke to her at hospital on the night of the incident.

The court heard Ms Stone said he was with two other men and they were the same people who had attacked her three weeks earlier, but she did not know the other men’s names.

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Senior Constable Taylor said the older of the couple’s two daughters at home that night told her she had heard banging on the door, then her mother asked the pair to go to their room.

During re-examination by Crown prosecutor Melissa Mahady, she told the court the two girls were there and, she believed, within hearing distance when Ms Stone entered the room and again said Jason Baxter and two others had committed the attack.

Senior Constable Taylor said it was then during a second conversation that the daughters told her they saw Jason Baxter.

The police officer also travelled with Mr Reid in the ambulance to Bendigo hospital the night he suffered his injuries.

She told the court she asked Mr Reid if he knew who did it and he replied no.

In response to further questions, she said, Mr Reid told her his attacker was male, aged in his late 20s to 30s, and suggested he “might have been the same guy that attacked me and my other half” three weeks earlier over a “kids’ fight”.

Senior Constable Taylor said he told her there were two other men and he was sure they were the same men from the earlier incident, but he did not know their names.

Homicide Squad Detective Senior Constable Hannah Thompson spoke to Ms Stone in Melbourne the day after the incident, and told the court Ms Stone said she had seen three men in her backyard: a Jason Baxter, a man she identified as the father of her daughter’s friend, ‘Gibbo’, and a third she had never seen before.

The court heard Ms Stone said it was Jason Baxter who threw the fuel on Mr Reid from a tin, printed with the word Caltex, that had come from her shed.

Detective Senior Constable Thompson said Ms Stone also described to her an earlier encounter with Jason Baxter and ‘Gibbo’, in which the former threatened her at home in relation to an incident involving her son and told her his name.

The police officer told the court she collected the clothing Ms Stone said she was wearing the night of the incident.

The court also heard the Major Crime Scene Unit found a ‘Motospray’ enamel thinner tin in the backyard of the house next to Mr Reid and Ms Stone’s the day after the incident, as well as a red cap under a dining chair in the couple’s home.

Leading Senior Constable Joshua O’Neill said he did not see fuel cans in the shed of the couple’s home, the doors of which were unlocked.

The jury was shown a video taken that day, which showed a charred bed base leaning against the rear porch, charred objects on the path and the porch, and remains of clothing or material in the bath.

Next-door neighbour Tianna Cleland told the court a fuel can found in their backyard the day after the fire did not belong to them and she had not seen it when in her backyard the evening before.

Her mother Evie Murn, who also lived at the address, said the can had not been there the morning of the fatal incident.

The trial continues before Justice Lesley Taylor.

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