A 39-year-old British woman was reportedly found lifeless by her 19-year-old daughter last June after being crushed by her ottoman-type bed, one of whose pistons, which normally allows the bed to lift, was defective, heard from the coroner on Monday.
“No words can describe what we feel. I can’t even begin to understand that this is real and you won’t walk through the door again (…) I hope you know how much I love you and that I would do anything for one more hug “, lamented his daughter Elizabeth in a publication on Facebook, according to “The Guardian”.
On June 7, the young woman had just gone up the stairs at her home in Seaham, in the north of England, when she allegedly found her mother, Helen Davey, unconscious, her head stuck under her ottoman bed, Crook Coroners Court heard during an inquest into the death.
“Her legs were bent like she was trying to get up. I dropped everything I was holding and tried to lift the top of the bed off his head,” his daughter reportedly recounted in a written statement read to the court and reported by the Northern Echo.
With difficulty and misery, the young woman managed to extract her mother’s head from the bed, whose gas piston mechanism, which usually allows the furniture to be lifted without difficulty, no longer seemed to work.
“It was so heavy for me to lift it up and try to get it off. (…) His face was blue with a clear mark on his neck. I managed to free it. She didn’t make any noise. I started CPR and noticed she wasn’t breathing,” she said, according to the British media.
Sadly, when first responders arrived at the scene, the mother of two was confirmed dead at the scene. She may have died of positional asphyxia, according to Durham and Darlington senior coroner Jeremy Chipperfield.
The investigation would have revealed that one of the two gas pistons was indeed defective, so that the bed base would have descended “unexpectedly” on the thirty-year-old while she was leaning over the storage space , he would have indicated in his report.
The latter would also have written to the Secretary of State for Commerce and the Office for Product Safety and Standards to warn them of the need to put in place preventive measures, to prevent future similar deaths.
“We are carefully studying the coroner’s report to understand the circumstances of this case, and if there is anything we can do to prevent tragedies like this in the future, we will respond fully before the deadline,” responded a door – spokesperson for the Ministry of Business and Commerce to the “Guardian”.