A 13-YEAR-old Okehampton schoolboy plunged to his death through a moss covered skylight at a warehouse.

Jethro Middleleton was with two other lads who had scaled the roof because ‘it was scary and it was fun’.

But the roof tiles were fragile and covered in moss and Jet, as he was known, fell around 40 feet through the skylight onto a concrete floor below.

He died from unsurvivable head injuries as his heartbroken family, who raced to the scene, comforted him.

An inquest at Exeter Coroner’s Court heard that one afternoon in April 2022 Jet and his pals had accessed the roof of the B Thompson and Sons warehouse on the North Road industrial estate in Okehampton.

The senior Devon coroner Philip Spinney said: ‘Whilst running across the roof area, a section of the roof broke and he fell through the roof to the concrete floor some 30-40 feet below.

‘Despite the efforts of police and paramedics he was pronounced deceased at the scene.’

The two boys he was with on the roof, who cannot be named, said in a statement that they were with a group of half a dozen youngsters.

They were messing about in containers by the factory, known as the cheesecake, but were bored and climbed a shed to access some scaffolding which was in place for roof repairs at the warehouse.

They saw some people and trucks operating at the warehouse and walked back across the roof but Jet - who may have been looking at his phone - trod on plastic roof panels which were covered in moss as he ran by them.

The friend said you could not tell the difference between the panels and the roof because of the moss.

As Jet ran along the skylight he fell — the second boy saying he heard a ‘crack’.

The two boys who had been with him looked through the gap and one nearly fell himself - and saw Jet prone on the ground.

The teenagers said they did see warning signs after the incident but would not have paid attention to them - with one of the boys saying: ‘We just do it because it was scary and it was fun.’

The other youngsters raised the alarm at the company who contacted ambulance and police.

A worker at the transport and distribution depot said the warehouse would normally have been packed with stock which might have stopped Jet’s fall into the concrete ground.

A post mortem said Jet, who was a keen rugby player for Okehampton RFC and loved other sports, died from an unsurvivable head injury.

A Health and Safety investigation said work was being carried out on the fragile and leaking roof and the boys gained access via a shed to the scaffolding which led to the top of the large warehouse.

The coroner Mr Spinney recorded an accidental death conclusion calling it ‘tragic’.