Herefordshire | Archive | 2003 | December | 18
From the archive, first published Thursday 18th Dec 2003.
KEITH Jones `slipped up' on standards and fell to his death.
An inquest heard how the experienced steel erector was not wearing a safety harness while working in a cherry picker crane basket 50ft above the ground.
The harness - when clipped to the basket - would have stopped Mr Jones' subsequent fatal fall at the M&M warehouse site, Leominster, in May.
The 46-year-old from Kingsland was putting a bolt or pole joint in place when he fell from the picker, suffering a serious head injury.
None of Mr Jones' three-strong sub-contract crew had their harnesses on; they heard only an `horrific thud' as their boss hit the ground.
A jury at Hereford Town Hall decided Mr Jones' death was accidental.
Crew members, the inquest heard, were in cherry picker cranes working on the warehouse's steel frame over a Sunday morning - without telling either of the two companies responsible for overall health and safety supervision.
One of the crew, Michael Negri, of Leominster, said in evidence that the team would only wear their `uncomfortable and restrictive' harnesses when Mr Jones insisted on it. Otherwise, he said, it was `understood' that they were optional.
Experience
Mr Negri was up in a cherry picker with Mr Jones when the accident occurred and told of trying to grab Mr Jones as he went down.
Mr Jones, he said, may have been `over-reaching' while standing on the middle bar of the basket.
Other evidence outlined Mr Jones' not wearing a harness as out-of-character for a self-employed man of experience.
The principal contractors had no issues with Mr Jones' stance on health and safety and, during site visits, he and his team were seen working `safely and consistently' with helmets, harnesses and other appropriate kit.
But there was no need for the team to be working that Sunday said David Thomas, managing director of Leominster based building contractors GP Thomas & Son. The project, said Mr Thomas, was well on time.
Health and Safety inspector David Bagnall said cherry pickers were hard to fall from if harnesses were being worn. It was Mr Bagnall's supposition that the crew `might just have let their normal standards slip' that morning.
County coroner David Halpern told the jury that an accidental death verdict was appropriate if it decided, on the evidence, that Mr Jones had fallen while `stretching that extra inch'.
© Newsquest Media Group 2008