DESIGNER clothing company Hugo Boss has been fined £1.2million over the death of a four-year-old boy who was crushed by an 18st mirror in a shop changing room.
Austen Harrison suffered fatal head injuries when the huge free-standing mirror, which should have been attached to a wall, toppled on to him at a Hugo Boss pop-up store in Bicester Village, Oxfordshire.
The boy was left with irreversible brain damage after the mirror — described as being balanced upright like a “domino piece” — came down on top of him when he visited the outlet with his parents Simon and Irina in June 2013.
He had been playing with it as his father tried on a suit.
Austen, from Crawley, West Sussex, died four days later at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.
An inquest concluded the mirror should have been fixed to a wall, with coroner Darren Salter describing the incident as “an accident waiting to happen”.
Hugo Boss later admitted offences under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
Announcing the fine at a sentencing hearing, Judge Peter Ross told Oxford crown court it would have been obvious to the untrained eye that the mirror posed a risk, saying it was nothing short of a miracle that it had not fallen before.
There had been numerous near misses with mirrors at other stores across the country, the judge said.
He added that Hugo Boss had a corporate responsibility and he was sure the health and safety breach went to the very top of the company.