Killed at Asda!
Family man Ken was killed in Asda carpark
Thursday 6th March 2008
It was just an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. I was at home with my youngest daughter, Hannah, 2, and my friend, Debbie, had popped round for a coffee. So why were the police knocking on my door?
'Your husband's been involved in an accident with a barrier at Asda,' the officer said. 'He's been rushed to hospital with head injuries.'
'What?' I spluttered.
It was May 2002, and just an hour-and-a-half earlier, at 1pm, my husband, Ken, 37, had got out of bed after a night shift as an electronics technician.
'I'll pick up a garden shed this afternoon,' he'd yawned.
'I want to come, Daddy,' our daughter, Jessica, 3, had pleaded.
'OK,' Ken had smiled.
He was a family man through and through. He spent every spare minute with me and our three girls, Emma, 8, Jessica and Hannah. So at 1.50pm, he'd helped Jessica into her pink raincoat and headed off to the shops.
'See you later, love,' he'd said.
But now, less than an hour later, the police were standing at my door and nothing made sense. I was so shocked, my brain went into autopilot. What was Ken doing at Asda? We never normally shopped there and they didn't sell sheds. And how on earth had a barrier hit him?
'Where's Jessica?' I asked.
'She's in the car,' the officer said. 'She wasn't harmed.'
A minute later, Jessica came running in and I picked her up in my arms.
'Are you OK, darling?' I asked.
She nodded, not a scratch on her.
But then I saw tiny specks of blood on her raincoat. Her daddy's blood.
'We think you should come to hospital with us,' the officer said.
Suddenly, my heart sank and I felt sick. Was this really happening?
Debbie said she'd collect Emma from school and I phoned my parents, Doug, now 68, and Pat Murphy, 67, who lived nearby, and asked them to come round and look after Jessica and Hannah. When they arrived, Dad went to have a word with the officers outside. Then Mum took the kids into the living room, and Dad ushered me into the kitchen.
As soon as I saw the pain on his face, I just knew.
'Ken's dead, isn't he?' I whispered.
Dad just nodded and hugged me. I stood there in utter disbelief. I couldn't even cry. Dad went with the police and identified Ken's body. But even then, I kept expecting to see my husband's car pulling into our drive, to hear the sound of his key in the front door. Only that never happened.
When Mum brought Emma home at 5pm, I sat her down in the living room and tried not to cry.
'Daddy's been in a bad accident,' I said. 'He died.'
It was only as the tears rolled down her cheeks, that I finally broke down, too. But through my pain and grief, I still felt so confused. How on earth had this happened?
I needed to know what had taken my husband away from me. At 7pm that night, Mum stayed with the kids while the police took Dad and I to the car park at Asda. They showed us the barrier, which was like a gate that swung open and closed. It was chained open now, but earlier in the day, it hadn't been secured.
'As your husband drove into the car park, a gust of wind pushed the barrier into the path of the car,' the officer explained. It had gone through the windscreen of our red Austin Montego Estate and hit Ken in the head.
He'd been pronounced dead soon after arriving at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff. I walked round the car park, feeling numb. He was only supposed to be gone for a few minutes. Now, my husband was never coming home again.
That evening, I sat on the settee and pulled Jessica onto my lap.
'Daddy had blood on his face and bubbles coming out of his mouth,' she said.
My heart missed a beat. Days later, I found out that Ken's injuries had caused him to choke on his own blood and he'd died of severe head injuries. And my poor little girl had seen it all.
Suddenly, anger exploded inside me. This should never have happened.
Ken's funeral was on 25 May 2002, 11 days after he died. As I stepped into St Peter's Church in Dinas Powys, I felt numb. I didn't cry a single tear. But back at home the next day, my tears came thick and fast. And they didn't stop. I'm sure I cried every day for a year.
The police were investigating Ken's death, and Cardiff City Council was looking into the circumstances surrounding the unsecured barrier. I was furious when I discovered there had been two other accidents at Asda stores caused by loose car park barriers, in Bloxwich, West Midlands, in 1999, and in Bristol in 2001.
After the Bloxwich accident, Asda had been prosecuted on two charges under the Health And Safety At Work act and fined £9,000. I hoped to get some justice for Ken, but in November 2005, three-and-a-half years after he died, the Crown Prosecution Service decided they didn't have enough evidence to prosecute anyone. Devastated is an understatement.
But four months later, in March 2006, I went along to Cardiff Coroner's Court for the inquest.
An Asda employee said that the barrier was difficult to close and it had got stuck open the day before the accident. It hadn't been secured with a padlock like it should have been, and it was blown into Ken's windscreen by a gust of wind.
I sobbed with relief when, after two weeks, the jury delivered a verdict of unlawful killing.
But my fight wasn't over, because Cardiff City Council's investigation was still ongoing.
On 21 January this year, I went with Mum, Dad and Emma to Newport Crown Court to see
Asda Stores Limited plead guilty to two Health And Safety At Work charges. They were fined £225,000.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a drop in the ocean to them and I feel so let down. Now, six weeks on, I still miss Ken every day. I'll never forgive Asda for what's happened to
my family.
Jessica, now 9, is doing well, and I'm trying my best to be both mum and dad to the girls.
One thing's for sure, I'll never let them forget just how much their daddy loved them.
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