{"id":375394,"date":"2025-12-29T15:57:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T15:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/375394\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T15:57:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T15:57:19","slug":"mother-and-two-children-killed-in-boxing-day-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/375394\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother and two children killed in Boxing Day fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

A mother and her two children were killed in a fire<\/a> that destroyed their family home in the early hours of Boxing Day.<\/p>\n

Police<\/a> were called to a report of a fire<\/a> at a property on Brimscombe Hill, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, at around 3am on 26 December <\/a>and officers attended the scene along with crews from Gloucestershire<\/a> Fire and Rescue Service and the ambulance service.<\/p>\n

Gloucestershire Police<\/a> said the father, who survived the blaze, was a serving officer. He tried to rescue his wife and two children \u2013 a girl aged seven and a four-year-old boy \u2013 but was beaten back by the severity of the fire.<\/p>\n

Detective Superintendent Ian Fletcher told reporters on Monday that the unnamed mother and father had been awoken by the fire and had attempted to reach their children in the rear bedroom.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThey have been unable to get to the back bedroom due to the voracity of the fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe father has smashed his way out of the house through a bathroom window in order to try to access the children\u2019s bedroom via the outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has been unable to enter the property via that bedroom window.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has then tried to re-enter the property through the bathroom window, by which stage the fire has taken hold in the bathroom and he\u2019s unable to get back into the upstairs bedrooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has subsequently gone downstairs and tried to force entry via the front and the back door but has been unable to get back inside to the property.<\/p>\n

\"Emergency<\/p>\n

Emergency services at the scene in Brimscombe Hill (PA Wire)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is at this point our colleagues from emergency services have attended and have started managing and dealing with that fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Fletcher said the fire was believed to have started on the ground floor and investigations were ongoing to establish the cause, but it was not being treated as suspicious.<\/p>\n

The extent of the fire has caused the roof of the mid-terrace Cotswold stone cottage to fall in and the ceilings and stairs have collapsed.<\/p>\n

A body of a woman in her forties has been recovered from the house, while the body of a child has been located at the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not treating this as a suspicious incident at this time,\u201d Mr Fletcher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis would appear to be a tragic accident that\u2019s occurred in the early hours of Boxing Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe surviving member of this family is a serving police<\/a> officer at Gloucestershire<\/a> Constabulary and again our hearts and prayers go out to him and all of his colleagues who know him very well.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is working with us to try to understand what exactly has happened within that property.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Fletcher added: \u201cWe have multiple witnesses who describe the anguish that he was going through, his inability to get in and save his children and save his wife.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is, as you can imagine, in a very distraught way.<\/p>\n

\u201cSadly, [he\u2019s] lost his family at a time which is supposed to be a happy festive period.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother and her two children were killed in a fire that destroyed their family home in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[160268,703,49,48,2770,10963,160266,160264,160265,160267,8434,82,85775],"class_list":{"0":"post-375394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-bathroom-window","9":"tag-boxing","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-children","13":"tag-gloucestershire","14":"tag-gloucestershire-fire-and-rescue-service","15":"tag-gloucestershire-police","16":"tag-ian-fletcher","17":"tag-mr-fletcher","18":"tag-property","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-stroud"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}