Tuesday, October 15, 2024 -A 39-year-old British woman was killed when a malfunctioning ottoman bed fell on her neck and asphyxiated her, a coroner’s report has revealed.
Helen Davey, a beauty salon owner who lived
in northeastern England, died in June as she “was leaning over the storage area
of an Ottoman-styled ‘gas-lift’ bed,” coroner Jeremy Chipperfield said in his
report released over the weekend.
Ottoman beds have a base that can be
raised usually using gas-lift hydraulics – to access a storage space
underneath.
These types of beds are a popular choice
for householders wanting to keep bedding or unseasonal clothes out of sight.
The mattress platform on Davey’s bed
fell unexpectedly, “trapping her neck against the upper surface of the side
panel of the bed’s base,” Chipperfield explained. “Unable to free herself, she
died of positional asphyxia. One of the two gas-lift pistons was defective.”
Davey was found by her daughter, Elizabeth,
according to a statement read in court.
“I went
upstairs, my mam’s bedroom door was wide open, and I saw her lying on her back
with her head under the bed,” Elizabeth said in court.
“Her legs
were bent as if she was trying to get up. I dropped everything that I was
holding and tried to lift the top of the bed off her head. The bed was no
longer a soft close and could fall heavily if it was released. It was so heavy
for me to lift it up and try to pull her out. I managed to lift it up enough to
use my foot to support it.
“I noticed that her face was blue with a
clear indent on her neck from the frame. I managed to pull her clear. I feared
that she was dead as she made no sound. I started CPR and noticed that she
wasn’t breathing,” she said.
Chipperfield warned in a letter to
Britain’s business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, that there is a risk of future
deaths “unless action is taken,” highlighting the “existence and use of gas
piston bed mechanisms whose failure presents a risk to life,” as a “matter of
concern.”
In the UK in 2022, 147 people died
after falling from a bed and another 18 died by accidental suffocation or
strangulation in bed, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA)
said in a statement.
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