Helen Davey, 39, from Seaham, died following a tragic accident caused by a failure of her lift bed. The woman was crushed. The coroner for County Durham in England, in a report published this week, warns against the potentially tragic consequences of faulty lifts in such furniture.
Helen Davey's death occurred in June. A British woman was found dead by her daughter Elizabeth. When the girl entered her mother's bedroom, she saw her “lying on her back with her head under the bed.” Her legs were “bent as if she was trying to stand up.” The teenager pulled her mother out from under the frame with difficulty and then tried to resuscitate her. The woman was no longer breathing. Even though emergency services were immediately called to the scene, she could not be saved, reports “The Guardian”.
The medics who arrived at the scene pronounced Helen Davey dead. Police later determined that one of the two lifts used to raise the bed was damaged. As the County Durham Coroner described in his report, the woman died after the part of the bed she was leaning over unexpectedly fell down and crushed her. Unable to free herself, the British woman suffocated.
A 39-year-old woman died following a bed failure
The document states that Davey was under the influence of alcohol at the time of her death – reports The Northern Echo. According to the coroner, this may have made it more difficult for the woman to get out from under the bed.
However, she warns that similar failures may pose a potentially fatal threat to others. In a letter to Jonathan Reynolds, the British minister for business and trade, he described the use of mechanisms whose failure could pose a risk to life as an “issue of concern”. A spokesman for the department sent condolences to the family of the deceased. He added that the ministry is currently reviewing the coroner's report to determine if it can do anything to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
The Guardian, The Northern Echo
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