A TRAGIC four-year-old boy tried in vain to escape a burning bedroom after accidentally lighting a barbecue click lighter which set fire to bedding, a Bradford inquest heard.

Harrowing details emerged during today's inquest of Nathan Harrison, who died after the fire at his house in Sunnyhill Grove, Keighley.

During the hearing, which concluded with a narrative verdict, it emerged that the youngster had been playing hide and seek at the time and had built a bedroom den when he lit the utility lighter.

The inquest heard how Nathan's autistic brother Matthew, 10, had previously stashed the lighter under his bed after climbing up on a chair to get it from a six-foot shelf in the pantry at the home they shared with mum Jodie Collins and step dad Joseph Turner.

Matthew, who had a habit of taking and stashing things in his bedroom, had told his mum and later police in a video interview that he had been looking for sweets in the pantry when he found the lighter, thinking it was a toy gun. He had secreted it under his bed to look at later and had planned to fire it out of the window, but did not.

On the afternoon of August 11 last year, the boys' mum, who was not at yesterday's inquest, had been exercising in the garage of the house when she went to get a shower and noticed blackening around Matthew's bedroom door.

It was only when she ran back outside to get help that she realised Nathan was not with his brother in the garden where they had been playing hide and seek.

She went back in the house and tried three times to search Matthew's smoke-filled bedroom, also blacked out by drawn blinds.

It was on her third attempt, while holding a towel over her mouth, that she found him collapsed on the floor hidden by toxic black smoke between the end of the bed and a wardrobe where he had been building a den with bedding.

Neighbour Julie Mitchell described seeing Nathan's mother falling to her knees and cradling him in her arms, crying as she carried him outside to wait for emergency services.

Despite great efforts from firefighters and paramedics at the scene and then medics at Airedale General Hospital, he was put on a ventilator which was switched off a short time later.

Fire investigator Mark Whittaker told the inquest the lighter had been found near bedding that had been draped over the end of the bed and trapped in a partially shut wardrobe to make a den. Evidence of Nathan's prints were found in soot around the walls of the room and on the door, indicating he had tried to get out.

Giving a narrative verdict, Bradford coroner Martin Fleming said: "It's more likely than not he inadvertently lit a utility lighter he was playing with which caused a naked flame to come into contact with bedding."

Footage of the easy to operate lighter being tested was shown during the inquest and the lock switch had been working.

The coroner said he would still consider asking regulators for utility lighters to be included with cigarette lighters under European safety legislation.