Electrician from Shrewsbury died after fan hit him on head
A 45-year-old electrician from Shrewsbury died after being struck by a fan and falling on his head while working in Egypt, an inquest heard.
A 45-year-old electrician from Shrewsbury died after being struck by a fan and falling on his head while working in Egypt, an inquest heard.
Neil Duckett was updating the electrics at a dairy in Cairo for Shrewsbury-based company Williams & Picken when the incident happened on May 18.
Andrew Barkley, deputy coroner for mid and northwest Shropshire, recorded a verdict of accidental death at an inquest in Wem yesterday.
He said doctors gave the cause of death as head injuries consistent with a fall.
In evidence read at the inquest it emerged that Mr Duckett, a father-of-two from Conway Drive on the Telford Estate, had been updating the electrics when he climbed onto a wall panel 1.8 metres high and was hit on his head by a fan and fell.
He had been working alongside Egyptian technician Usama Omar Saad, 41, from Juhayna Food Industries.
Mr Duckett was taken to Dar Laz Fouad Hospital with bleeding on the brain and damage to the skull but died four days later.
Cables were being posted through from one room to the other as part of the work and Neil Thomas, an electrical engineer for Williams & Picken, told the inquest that Mr Usama had come running to get him.
He said: “We were disconnecting power supplies from old switch gear to new switch gear. I was working with Alan Potter in the chilled water plant and Neil was with Usama in the electrical switch room.
“I couldn’t hear anything because of the noise in the plant and I was first aware something wasn’t right when Usama was at the entrance to the chilled plant shouting at me ‘Neil come quick’.
“He led me into the switch room and I saw Neil lying on his side facing me.”
Samantha Woosnam, a director at Williams & Picken, said: “Usama illustrated that he turned around to see Neil standing with one foot on a panel and one on a ladder.
“It was a difficult scenario because no one who worked directly for us saw what happened but there was a good relationship with the Egyptian engineers and they spoke good English.”