Man died suddenly five years after suffering head injury at work in Yorkshire

Piotr Poweska fell around 5ft and hit his head while emptying waste into a skip outside an Aaztec Associates warehouse in February 2014, and was taken to Harrogate District Hospital for treatment.

A jury inquest, held in Harrogate, heard that CT scans revealed the joiner had suffered brain damage during the fall.

Mr Poweska, who was born in Poland, began having epileptic seizures and was prescribed medication, but attended the A&E department at York Hospital more than 50 times over the following five years for treatment.

The 43-year-old was found dead at his flat in Wigginton Road, York on Saturday, June 15 in 2019 and a post-mortem examination found the cause of death was “sudden, unexplained death in epilepsy” following the traumatic brain injury he suffered in 2014.

Neuropathologist Dr Azzam Ismail, who examined Mr Poweska’s brain, said the left temporal lobe had been damaged and it was “significant enough to cause repeated seizures” as well as issues with his memory and judgement.

He also told the inquest the death “can be attributed to the trauma” he suffered during the fall in 2014.

The accident happened after Mr Poweska had been asked to take off cuts out of a waste bin and empty them into a skip while working for the company, which is based in York and manufactures toilet cubicles and other washroom products for businesses.

He agreed to climb into the waste bin and his colleague raised it up, using a forklift, so he could then drop the off cuts straight into the skip. But when the bin tipped over, he fell off and hit his head on the concrete floor.

His colleague said they were “having some banter and chatting away” shortly before the accident and “did not stop to consider any aspects of safety”.

Matthew Welborn, production director at Aaztec Associates, told the inquest that Mr Poweska his colleague failed to follow an “established and accepted safety procedure”.

“I have never witnessed them unloading the waste bin in that way and no one was aware they had done so before the accident occurred,” he said.

“They received forklift truck training and therefore we had thought it would have been evident to them – from their training – that no one should ever be lifted onto the forks of a truck whilst inside an unstable load.”

The Health and Safety Executive conducted an investigation and concluded that no action should be taken against the company.

The jury, which deliberated for just over an hour, concluded that his death was accidental.