Sponsored by
Workshop death pure accident
A FATHER-OF-TWO from Hailsham died from flash burns after an electric shock at a disused workshop, an inquest has heard.
Twenty-seven-year-old Charles Killick, from Marshfoot Lane, who recovered scrap metal for a living, suffered 28 per cent burns to his body when a surge of electricity caused a blast, shooting metal debris up to five metres at the Shep Plastics workshop near Lower Dicker on April 8.
He was airlifted to Eastbourne District General Hospital, suffering burns to his face, hands and torso.
He was transferred to the burns unit at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, where he died from his injuries on April 12.
At an inquest at Eastbourne Coroner’s Court on Thursday (October 7) attended by more than 30 of Mr Killick’s friends and family, coroner Alan Craze recorded a verdict of accidental death.
The court heard how Mr Killick, known as ‘Charlie Boy’ to his friends and family, had offered the owners of the disused factory site £200 to remove any scrap metal after the building was repossessed from Shep Plastics.
Although the electricity supply in the factory had been turned off at the fuse board by demolition contractors, the mains cable was still live when Mr Killick started to dismantle the fuse box - triggering the explosion.
Family friend Kevin Jones, from Hailsham, who was working with Mr Killick when the accident happened, called the emergency services. “I just heard the bang and I saw Charlie was on fire,” he told the inquest.
Mr Killick was treated at a nearby café until the ambulance arrived.
Fire officer Sarah Jones, from East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, was off duty when she was alerted by a neighbour that there had been an accident.
“He was standing with his hands under the cold tap of the sink. He was in considerable pain,” she said.
“I took the garden hose and sprayed him until the paramedics arrived.”
Coroner Alan Craze said the accident had occurred because the workmen had wrongly assumed that the power had been completely turned off.
“Charlie wasn’t doing it for the first time. He will have known that cabling carries electricity.
“I don’t believe that he thought the main input cable was anything other than live. Crucially he wasn’t working on that cable. What he was working on was a fuse box above that cable.
“I’m working in my own mind, not that he had relied on what everybody had told him, but that the main switch was visibly in the off position which would make this explosion a pure accident,” he said.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Eastbourne
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: South west
