Dad and son, 17, fell to their deaths while working on 21-storey towerblock
A father and son fell to their deaths while working on a 21-storey towerblock after a brake failure caused their platform to collapse, an inquest heard.
David Bottomley, 53, and his 17-year-old son Clayton died after the platform they were standing on suddenly plummeted from the top of the Unity Building, in Liverpool city centre, on May 19, 2021.
The pair had been working for a construction company working on the building, with Clayton onsite for six months as he completed an apprenticeship.
Witnesses said their climbing platform began to click ‘like a rollercoaster’ before suddenly dropping to the seventh floor.
Thomas Blanchfield, who was working in the tower and witnessed the incident from a meeting room window, said: ‘There was about four to six clicks before it went into free-fall.’
The inquest heard failure of the pinion shafts in the machine’s gearboxes caused the brakes to disconnect, and failure of a second pinion shaft caused the mast climbing working platform to descend under its own weight.
A Health and Safety Executive inspector said the failure had been caused by ‘fatigue’.
Paul Shah, a project manager for site operators Laing O’Rourke, said the platforms had been in use for at least five years at the time of the fatal incident, and were checked every day.
He said: ‘The daily check is mainly a visual, overall look at the machine.
‘The one check we did was the function check, up and down, and the emergency release.’
But there was supposed to be another daily brake test which staff had not been informed about, as they had not been given a manual, the inquest heard.
David was pronounced dead at the scene, with his cause of death being ‘massive blunt force chest injuries’.
Clayton was taken to the intensive care unit at Aintree Hospital, where he died on May 23 after suffering ‘severe, irreversible and unsurvivable brain damage’.
A jury reached a conclusion of accidental death. Coroner Johanna Thompson said: ‘A daily and weekly check was completed as per the provided checklist on the day/week of the incident.
‘This included simple visual checks and functional tests of the up/down/stop switches. These identified no problem with the equipment. Failure of the pinion shafts in both gearboxes caused the brakes to disconnect.
‘Failure of the second pinion shaft caused the mast climbing working platform to descend under its own weight. David died at the scene shortly following the incident.
‘Clayton was resuscitated at the scene, then transported by ambulance to Aintree University Hospital. Clayton died four days after the incident on May 23 2021 at Aintree University Hospital.’
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