IT was highly likely the deaths of two teenagers and a three-year-old boy after a house fire would have been avoided had the property's smoke alarms not been disabled.

At an inquest at County Hall, Exeter, into the tragedy, it also emerged that the fire was started by one of the children in the house playing with a cigarette lighter which set fire to a folding bed.

Andrew Gunn (pictured right), an 18-year-old waiter, of Radway Hill, Bishopsteignton; his girlfriend Rosie Louise Bennellick, 17; and her three-year-old brother Harvey were in a first-floor bedroom in the terraced house in Lee Close, Honiton, when the fire broke out on April 5 last year.

Rosie's father Sean tried desperately to reach them, only to be beaten back by the heat and thick black smoke, and they were eventually brought out by firefighters.