A CONTRACT cleaner was crushed to death between a cherry picker lifting platform and a roof beam as horrified loved ones looked on.

Father of two Paul Edwards, 38, from Birmingham, was working for Midlands-based IDM on Monday, November 25, 2002, clearing fire and smoke damage following a blaze three weeks earlier at the Fish Brothers Peugeot dealership off Swindon's Great Western Way.

Mr Edwards had been using the platform when he became trapped between its cage and a metal girder, and a Swindon coroner's jury heard yesterday that a pathologist found he died of "traumatic asphyxiation." He had three broken ribs.

To add to the horror, loved ones including a brother, sister, nephew and sister-in-law were among his work gang.

In their bid to save him, co-workers tried and failed to lower the cherry picker with a ground-level control panel, and to operate Mr Edwards' controls by reaching over from another cherry picker. IDM workers and garage staff tried to let down the cherry picker's tyres, only to find they were filled with foam and couldn't be let down. Garage staff cut hydraulic lines in a vain bid to make the platform drop, and finally removed two of the wheels, but a paramedic pronounced him dead at about 4.30pm, about half an hour after the accident happened.

Supervisors Edward Paterson Mr Edwards' brother-in-law and John Fisher revealed that neither of them had been trained in how to use the machine Mr Edwards was operating. Nor, as far as they knew, had Mr Edwards.

Mr Fisher said: "I saw everybody round the cherry picker where Paul was. Paul was hunched over the top of the cage that was raised up to the girder. His hands were drooping right down. His back was against the steel girder."

Mr Fisher told how he pulled an emergency button, only to push it back almost instantly as the cage began to lurch even further upwards. He made frantic attempts to find some sort of "dead man's handle" with which to shut the machine down and drop the platform, but could not.

He added: "Paul was crying out for help. Everybody was running around panicking. Nobody knew what to do. Some of the garage mechanics came in and cut the hydraulic pipes. They thought it would lower the boom, but it did not. We even tried to let the tyres down, but they were foam-filled."

The inquest heard from several of the staff that the day after the tragedy, they were asked by IDM operations manager Quintin Bone to sign a document saying they had studied certain safety issues.

A number told the inquest, either in person or in statements read out during the hearing, that they were unable to remember the safety issues concerned. Asked about this document and whether he had asked people to sign, Mr Bone said: "Yes, to my eternal embarrassment."

Asked by assistant deputy Wiltshire and Swindon coroner Nigel Brookes why he had asked them to sign, Mr Bone said: "I really do not know. It was pointless. It has created a lot of misunderstanding since. It was tactless, too."

The inquest continues today, when Health and Safety Executive personnel are due to give evidence.

Barrie Hudson