Archie Battersbee was fatally injured ‘inadvertently during a prank or experiment that went wrong’, a coroner has found.

The 12-year-old’s life support was switched off on August 6, 2022, after his parents failed in bids to overturn a High Court ruling that doctors could do so.

Senior coroner Lincoln Brookes concluded today that the boy’s death was an accident.

Brookes found evidence Archie was suffering from a low mood in the last 12 months of his life, though stressed there was no sign he intended to harm himself.

An inquest into his death was held over the last two days this week his mother found Archie unconscious at their Southend, Essex, home in April 2022 with something tied around his neck.

His mother, Hollie Dance, has said he might have been taking part in an online challenge.

Brookes said Archie was a ‘complex’ child. Recording a conclusion of accidental death, he said the boy ‘hadn’t intended to harm himself but had done so inadvertently during a prank or experiment that went wrong’.

He said that he was satisfied that Archie ‘put his head in a noose or put a cord round his neck’.

‘I think he did so without necessarily a good reason, 12-year-old boys don’t always have reasons,’ Brookes added.

‘I think it may just be a case of curiosity – what does it feel like?’

He said that ‘something very similar happened the night before’ when Archie’s sister saw him putting a cord around his head to try to pull a door closed.

‘This was an accident that went wrong, either a prank to shock his mum as she came out of the bedroom to find him doing something shocking or reckless, or just experimenting to see what it was like to do this,’ Brookes went on.

‘It probably went wrong very quickly and very badly.’

Dance previously told the inquest: ‘I still don’t know if Archie was trying the blackout challenge on April 7 or before, I still don’t know what he was watching on TikTok.

‘He hated bullying and loud shouting. I can see that he might possibly be influenced, even though he knew right from wrong, if that’s what peers and social media were telling him to do so.

‘I fear that’s what was prompted.’

In a case over who can make life or death decisions for gravely ill children, doctors felt there was little hope Archie would make a recovery as he had suffered severe brain damage – his brainstem, they said, was dead.

His parents believed otherwise, saying his condition was better than what was described in court by health experts.

Across several court decisions, judges sided with doctors who said the burden of his complex treatment ‘along with the total lack of prospect of recovery’ outweighed the benefits of keeping him alive on a ventilator and drugs.

Archie’s family, who are Christian, repeatedly appealed the rulings, insisting they wanted Archie to die at a time ‘chosen by God’.

‘I would just like to say I am the proudest mum in the world, Dance said outside Royal London Hospital after her son died when his treatment was withdrawn.

‘He was such a beautiful little boy. He fought right until the very end and I am so proud to be his mum.’

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