Boy 'died quickly' after chair crush

An eight-year-old boy crushed to death by his great-grandmother's orthopaedic chair would have died within minutes, an inquest has heard.

Lee Entwistle died of crush asphyxia after his neck and chest became trapped in the mechanism underneath the electrically-powered chair.

A pathologist at the inquest in Manchester said Lee would have been dead up to 10 minutes before emergency services arrived.

Dr Melanie Newbould told the court that there would have been "a relatively short period of time" between Lee becoming caught up in the mechanism and the schoolboy dying.

Lee Entwistle: "a lovable little boy"

"Death would occur within a few minutes, certainly," she said.

By that time, there would have been no chance of saving him.

Lee died in the accident after playing on his great-grandmother's chair with his cousins at her home in Northern Moor, Greater Manchester, on the evening of 2 June 2000.

He was left to play by himself when the cousins left the house and his mother went to fetch a cup of tea for Lee's disabled great-grandmother, Margaret Duplex.

She returned a few minutes later to find her son choking, with his head caught between two metal bars underneath the chair.

It is thought he accidentally pressed a button on the chair's handset, bringing the frame down on his neck.

Police investigation

Despite efforts to resuscitate him at the scene and at nearby Wythenshawe Hospital, he was pronounced dead around an hour after the accident 18 months ago.

It had taken around 15 minutes for emergency services to reach the boy and begin work to free him, the court heard.

The inquest also heard that following Lee's death a police investigation was launched and a file on the incident was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The CPS decided the chair's manufacturer, C&R Wall of Sheffield, had no criminal case to answer.

Recommendations as to how the chair could have been made safer were passed to other agencies, such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The inquest continues.