A woman and two children aged seven and four died in a fire in the early hours of Boxing Day after their father, a serving police officer, desperately tried to save them. The officer smashed his way out of the stone cottage in the Cotswolds and tried to break into his children’s bedroom from the outside to rescue them but was beaten back by the flames.
His wife’s body has been recovered and the body of one of the children was found in the mid-terrace cottage. Search and recovery experts are still looking for the body of the second child. Gloucestershire police are not treating the fire as suspicious and believe it to have been a tragic accident.
Det Supt Ian Fletcher said emergency services were called at 3am on Boxing Day to a “well-established” fire. The mother and father had been woken by the blaze and attempted to reach the children but were unable due to the ferocity and heat. The father smashed a bathroom window to try to access the children’s bedroom from outside but could not enter, and then tried to re-enter the property but the fire had taken hold.
The man was treated at hospital. It is believed the fire began on the ground floor and worked its way up, with the roof collapsing. The mother was in her late 30s; the children were a seven-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy. It is not yet known which child’s body has been found.
Gloucestershire’s temporary chief constable, Maggie Blyth, said: “This is an unimaginable tragedy and my thoughts are with our colleague, along with all of those involved and impacted by what has happened.” A cordon remains in place and an emergency services presence is expected to continue for several days as the site is structurally unstable.
