The woman and her two children died after the fire ripped through their home as they slept.
The woman and her two children died after the fire ripped through their home as they slept.
George Lithgow, Press Association and Olivia Bridge
14:02, 12 Jan 2026Updated 14:06, 12 Jan 2026
A Boxing Day blaze killed a mum and her two young children as they slept as their father desperately attempted to rescue them, an inquest into their deaths heard today.
Fionnghuala Shearman, 38, known as Nu, and their daughter, Eve, and youngest child, Ohner, died from “exposure to the combustion products of fire”.
Just after Christmas at around 3am on December 26, a fire believed to have started on the ground floor engulfed a home in Brimscombe, near Stroud, Gloucestershire.
While emergency services raced to the scene, Tom Shearman, a police officer, smashed a bathroom window and attempted to save his wife and children, aged seven and four.
However, he was unable to get to their bedrooms situated at the rear of the property.
Due to the severity of the fire, he could not get back into the house through the bathroom window and could not force open the ground-floor doors.
Katy Skerrett, senior coroner for Gloucestershire, opened three separate inquests into the deaths of Mrs Shearman and her two children at Gloucestershire Coroner’s Court today (Monday).
Outlining the circumstances of the “tragic” deaths, Ms Skerrett told the court: “The fire service was contacted at 3.12am on December 26 2025 by a neighbour reporting that there was a fire.
“When the fire service arrived, the house, a terrace cottage, was well ablaze. It took some time to contain that blaze.
“It was established that only one of the four occupants had managed to escape the cottage alive, Tom Shearman.
“The other three occupants were unable to exit the house due to the fire and smoke which engulfed the property.
“When Tom had been spoken to by the police he explained that he and Fionnghuala were awoken by smoke during the night.
“He got out of bed and attempted to enter the children’s bedroom, but the smoke and heat prevented him from doing so.
“He managed to exit the cottage by the bathroom window and then attempted to re-enter the house by the window, but once again, the fire prevented him from doing so.
“Despite several repeated attempts, he was unable to re-enter the house.”
Ms Skerrett said a forensic pathologist had given a provisional cause of death for all three members of the Shearman family as “exposure to the combustion products of fire, pending toxicology and microscopy”.
The court heard Mrs Shearman was formally identified from a tattoo on her body while her two children were identified by DNA analysis.
The coroner adjourned all three inquests and did not set a further date.
No members of the Shearman family attended the brief hearing, which lasted less than 10 minutes.
While investigations are ongoing to establish the cause, the fire is not being treated as suspicious.
The fire destroyed the roof, the ceilings and the stairs, as well as causing other significant internal damage.
