Wednesday - April 20, 2011

‘Elf & Safety Was Right

An elderly gardener drowned after he fell from a step-ladder and landed head first in a water butt, an inquest heard.

Tragic Arthur Sexton, 80, was found with both legs poking out of the four-foot deep water container after his wife reported him missing to a neighbour.

The father-of-two was removed from the barrel but he was pronounced dead when paramedics arrived at the scene in Fleet, Lincolnshire.

An inquest into the retired printer’s death heard that police found a pair of flimsy step-ladders, which had collapsed near to where Arthur died.

Coroner Maureen Taylor told Spalding Coroners’ Court the cause of death was drowning and recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Pc Peter Avery, of Holbeach Police, checked Arthur’s body but could not find his pulse.

He said: ‘There were a pair of flimsy stepladders near the shed which appeared to have collapsed shut.

‘It seemed to me that the man had fallen from the ladder directly into the water butt.’

Passing a verdict of accidental death on Friday coroner Maureen Taylor said: ‘It’s clear we will never find out how this tragic accident occurred.’

I’m not too sure about this one. If you follow the link, the plastic rain barrel that they show in the picture seems to have a cover on it. Is such a cover strong enough to keep an old fellow from falling through and getting stuck in the barrel? I don’t know. Did the fall knock him cold and then he drowned, or did he struggle? I have no idea, but the though occurs to me that his impact should have displaced quite a lot of the water, and if he’d swung his legs he could have toppled the barrel over. Unless it was bolted down?

I went online and looked at rain barrels. In the UK they call them water butts. The only one I could find that was 4 feet tall, as the news article says, was a massive unit that holds 350 liters (75 gallons) . Anything bigger is a flat tank design. And guess what? They all have robust safety lids. Sure, people can convert any old plastic shipping barrel, but the one pictured was built with a spigot; I don’t think it’s a conversion, it was built as a water butt. It’s actually quite difficult to find a plastic drum or barrel larger than 55 gallons; if the article was correct with this butt’s height, then it would hold about 20 cubic feet of water - 150 gallons. 1200 pounds of water. Good luck finding one.

Just wondering about the ladder part as well. Because I work with ladders. Big ones, small ones, extension ladders and step ladders. And yeah, I’ve fallen off once or twice. And you know what? You don’t fall off a ladder in a perfect swan dive, straight down onto a little target like the open top of a barrel. You fall sideways, almost as if you were half lying down. Which makes this coroner’s verdict seem ... a bit lazy at best, in my opinion.

So I wonder if this was a murder, done either by some chavs as a sick joke, or by the family to off the old duffer for the insurance money? Or even a suicide?

Posted by Drew458     on 04/20/2011 at 10:34 AM   
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