Heidi Chalkley was apparently joking around when she both hands got trapped in the automatic doors. Photo / Facebook
Heidi Chalkley was apparently joking around when she both hands got trapped in the automatic doors. Photo / Facebook
A mother was crushed to death by faulty automatic garage doors in front of horrified friends after clinging to the closing shutters in an "act of silliness".
Heidi Chalkley, 40, was dragged into the mechanism after grabbing onto the metal shutters with both hands as they rose up.
Her armsgot trapped and she was pulled into the rolling metal shutters and crushed to death, an inquest heard.
But tragically a report found she might have survived had the safety detectors on the garage doors been working properly.
The social worker, from Cambridgeshire, was with a friend who lived at the four-storey apartment block at the time of the tragedy.
The pair were making their way out of the carpark at the bottom of the building when Chalkley pressed the button to open the garage and grabbed onto the moving shutter "in a moment of silliness".
Heidi and a friend were leaving Ruth Bagnall Court via the carpark at the rear of the building when she became trapped in the automatic door. Photo / Google
Coroner's officer Paul Garnell said at the time of the incident that Chalkley was "pulled into the mechanism" after grabbing hold of the rolling metal door.
Garnell said: "They (Mrs Chalkley and her friend) were going out of the exit via the carpark.
"She had pressed the button to operate it and in the process of the shutter going up in an act of silliness she reached up and held on to the shutter.
"She was meant to drop down but her arms got caught and the shutters pulled her up into the mechanism where it caused death immediately.
"Members of the public tried to come to her aid but it was unsuccessful."
A pre-inquest review at Huntingdon Coroner's Court yesterday was told how the safety sensors were faulty and Chalkley's arms became trapped - leading to her death shortly after.
It heard how she might have survived had the automatic shutter been working properly, but that she died at the scene of multiple injuries after getting trapped and being lifted off the ground by her arms.
The review heard how members of the public as well as her friend desperately tried in vain to save her but she passed away almost immediately after, in August 2016.
The pre-inquest heard from Paul Arnold, a specialist electrical inspector with the Health and Safety Executive, which found that the detectors on the shutter doors had not be "configured" correctly.
In his report, he stated that it was "unlikely Mrs Chalkley would have sustained fatal injuries" if the garage door was working properly, the Cambridge News reported this week.
An HSE investigation is ongoing and a decision on whether to bring a criminal case against housing firm Luminus - the owners of the Ruth Bagnall Court block of flats - is yet to be made.
Coroner Sean Horstead, reading from an HSE report, stated that it was found that "if high-level detectors had been connected to a particular terminal, the gate would have stopped".
