{"id":261185,"date":"2026-01-01T06:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T06:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/261185\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T06:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T06:24:13","slug":"stroud-boxing-day-fire-victims-named-as-bodies-recovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/261185\/","title":{"rendered":"Stroud Boxing Day fire victims named as bodies recovered"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A mother and her two young children who died in a house fire on Boxing Day have been named locally.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Seven-year-old Eve, four-year-old Ohner, and their mother, Fionnghuala Shearman <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c0mpmw42jx4o\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">died after a <\/a>fire engulfed their mid-terrace Cotswold home on Brimscombe Hill in Stroud, at about 03:00 GMT on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Tom Shearman, a serving police officer with Gloucestershire Constabulary, escaped the burning house and tried multiple times to re-enter to save his family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Mrs Shearman&#8217;s body was recovered on Sunday and Gloucestershire Police&#8217;s Interim Chief Constable Maggie Blyth confirmed on Tuesday both children&#8217;s bodies and that of the family dog have now been recovered.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Ms Blyth added: &#8220;I and all of the organisation will continue to support our officer and his family over what continues to be a very, very difficult period at a very, very difficult time of the year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;We&#8217;re in very close contact with him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The couple were woken by the fire, which broke out on the ground floor, in the early hours of Boxing Day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Mr Shearman smashed his way out of the house through a bathroom window to try to access the children&#8217;s bedroom via the outside, but was unable to re-enter the building due to the intensity of the blaze.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Police confirmed there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the fire&#8217;s cause.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The blaze has completely destroyed the house, causing the roof and stairs of the stone cottage to collapse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Since the blaze, the community has rallied together to support Mr Shearman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A fundraiser has reached more than \u00a3200,000 in two days with donations and condolences flooding in, including from people who worked with fashion designer Mrs Shearman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Northern Ireland-based yarn shop, Dye Candy, said on Facebook: &#8220;For such a talented, kind and beautiful woman to be taken so suddenly and horrifically along with her two children is unbearable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;She will be sorely missed from our community and my thoughts are with her family and friends at this terrible time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">And The Wool Kitchen wrote: &#8220;I will miss your messages, the chats, and seeing your face. I will carry you in my heart forever.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;I hope wherever you have landed, it&#8217;s full of love and laughter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Holy Trinity Church in Brimscombe will remain open to allow people to &#8220;grieve together&#8221; in the wake of the &#8220;terrible tragedy&#8221;, Rev Peter Francis told BBC West.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Ms Blyth said the community&#8217;s support has helped the force during this difficult period.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;I particularly wanted to thank our public &#8211; our communities in Gloucestershire &#8211; that have shown me and my officers and staff huge compassion and huge kindness over the past 24 hours in particular and the past few days,&#8221; Ms Blyth added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;That kindness and compassion from the public has really enabled our workforce to keep delivering a service over this Christmas and New Year period &#8211; at a time when such an awful tragedy has sent shockwaves through the organisation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Work will now take place to make the building safe to enable Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service to investigate the cause of the fire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The fire service said its crews managed to stop the blaze spreading from the mid-terraced house into neighbouring homes but the damage to the house was extensive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother and her two young children who died in a house fire on Boxing Day have been&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-261185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115818415002298627","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}