Tragic death of potato farmer trapped inside machinery

A farmer was killed when he became trapped in machinery on its first day of use at the family business, an inquest jury has heard.

Robin Chappell had been inside the Tong box tipper clearing out loose potatoes when he accidently started its cycle. The lid came down trapping him by his neck.

On Thursday (March 10) the inquest heard that the machinery was designed to handle standard 5ft wide boxes. The farm – R Chappell and Sons in Cowbit Road, Spalding – had some 4ft 6in boxes which were too narrow to cover the two light sensors which governed the start-up of the machine’s automatic cycle.

The jury of eight women and three men was told that, in an attempt to resolve this, Mr Chappell (71) and his brother and business partner David Chappell (71) jointly decided to place a cardboard box over one of the sensors.

The belief is that is that while Robin was inside the machine, his leg inadvertently covered the other sensor, triggering the onset of the cycle.

Giving evidence on day one of a two-day inquest, Robin’s son, David Chappell Jnr, said the grading operation with the box tipper had started at 7.30am on April 23, 2014, and the incident happened just after lunch.

David Jnr had been stationed on the conveyor belt. A lorry blocked his sight of Robin, who throughout the day had been on a forklift placing full boxes into the tipper and occasionally getting inside it to clear out loose potatoes.

David Jnr told the jury that he was first made aware of a potential problem by fellow worker Zbigniew Stec (known as Fritz).

“He shouted over to me ‘just go and check on your dad’, because he had not moved in a while.

“I walked around the lorry and saw him trapped by the neck. I shouted to Fritz: ‘Stop everything, he’s trapped!'”

Mr Stec fetched David Snr, who immediately removed the cardboard box as he thought it would help the effort to free Robin.

David Jnr went to call for an ambulance, while the other two men worked successfully to free Robin by Mr Stec unscrewing hydraulic pipes. David Jnr told the jury it was apparent that his father had already died, which was later confirmed.

The inquest heard that Robin, who worked six and sometimes seven days a week, was the driving force behind the business, which had an annual turnover of around £1.3million.

Both he and David lived on the farm, which was started by their father Ronald.

The purchase of the box tipper had been David Snr’s idea to speed up handling of the 650 boxes of potatoes which the farm graded before shipping to chip producer McCain’s at Whittlesey.

The machinery – bought secondhand from Ely firm David Harrison Handling Solutions for £12,500 – had only been delivered the previous day.

Evidence was heard that it had worked without fault for the previous owner, who had only used 5ft wide boxes. It had been thoroughly checked before being delivered to the Spalding farm.

The jury returned a conclusion of “misadventure”.

The Health and Safety Executive said: “HSE will not be prosecuting as a result of the investigation.”

A separate inquest in June last year into the death of Spalding resident Vladeks Sinavskis heard that he never got over the death of Robin, whom he looked upon “as a father”.