A SCHOOLBOY may have been trying to climb back into a five-star hotel from a fire escape when he fell to his death, an inquest heard.

Matthew Richard Hamer, nine, died on his way back from a room on the 21st floor to join his mother, Jane Hill, at the poolside restaurant on the eighth floor of the Hilton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

When he did not appear she searched for him in the room, in the hotel lobby, at its entrance and at the pool, and alerted hotel staff, who found his body at the bottom of the fire escape.

The inquest heard the doors leading into the fire escape stairwell only opened one way and that once inside the only exit was at the bottom.

Ms Hill said in a statement that Matthew was an active boy who was proud of managing to climb out of a toilet cubicle when he was unable to open its door on a previous trip to the Malaysian city.

A ledge ran round the outside of each floor of the hotel, and above the tenth floor the staircase was partially open, so it was possible for somone to climb from it onto the ledge.

“He may have thought this may have been a way to get back into the hotel,” Ms Hill’s statement said of the ledge. “Perhaps he was trying to work out an escape route when he fell.”

Coroner Donald Coverdale recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Ms Hill said she and her son, of Newton Terrace in Bishophill, had arrived in Kuala Lumpur on July 22, 2012, and had gone swimming immediately after checking in at the hotel.

Matthew had returned to their room to change while she waited for him in the restaurant where they had ordered food.

He was used to staying in five-star hotels and liked travelling in the lifts by himself.

After half-an-hour, she became concerned he had not returned, and searched different parts of the hotel for him.

Hotel staff went to the fire escape after they checked the CCTV, which showed him running past the lifts towards the escape.