Norfolk undertaker may have reached under scissor lift before she was crushed, inquest hears
Sally Blundell, 58, was found dead at the East of England Co-op Funeral Services branch in Swaffham on December 1 2023
An undertaker found crushed to death by a piece of equipment used to move coffins in a funeral parlour may have gone to reach for something under the device before it lowered onto her, an inquest heard.
Funeral administrator Sally Blundell, 58, had been working alone at the East of England Co-op Funeral Services branch in Swaffham, Norfolk on December 1 2023.
She was found by a colleague who attended from the Dereham branch after a woman, who had gone to a pre-arranged appointment to visit a deceased relative at the Swaffham branch, found no staff there and raised concerns.
The inquest was earlier told that the device is used to move bodies from fridges in a back room at the funeral parlour.
The hydraulic scissor lift mortuary trolley was brought into the courtroom in Norwich and shown to jurors today.
HSE specialist inspector Jonathan Wright gave a demonstration of how the device works, with a hand pump used to pump hydraulic fluid to raise a table on a scissor lift.
Norfolk area coroner Yvonne Blake told jurors that “we don’t know which height the trolley was at on the day in question”.
Mrs Blundell had been “kneeling so her legs were underneath her”, the coroner said, with her upper body inside the frame.
“She was moved for first aid attempts and such like,” said Ms Blake.
Dr Eleanor Jay, an engineer who compiled an expert report on the incident, said that in her view a spring in the device – which closes a valve to stop the table lowering – had become “plastically deformed”.
She said it “didn’t always return to its closed position every time”, meaning the table could continue to lower.
In her report, Dr Jay said: “If Mrs Blundell let go of the handle (on the device) to reach something under the table, contrary to warning stickers and training, it’s possible that the table continued to fall at an indeterminate speed and she became trapped underneath it.”
She said that the metal of the spring “relaxed over time” and this was “most likely because it had been overstretched by an operator opening or closing the handle further than it should be”.
Earlier in the inquest, the coroner told jurors that “three experts have agreed she (Mrs Blundell) must have inserted herself” in the frame of the device.
“What we don’t know is why,” said Ms Blake.
“It was noted her glasses were found on the floor but they weren’t necessarily under the trolley,” she said.
Ms Blake continued: “All the explanations seem fairly weird.
“It’s not the sort of thing you would normally crawl under.
“You would move the trolley.”
Stephen Kemp, the colleague who found Mrs Blundell, said she had been wearing headphones.
Mrs Blundell’s medical cause of death was recorded as “contusion and compression of the chest by an external object”.
Her daughter, Lucy Blundell, said that her mother, of Great Cressingham, was “respected by her colleagues” and had a “wide network of friends”.
The inquest, being heard with a jury, continues.