Mum-of-two, 59, killed after 6ft garden wall falls on top of her while she was weeding
The victim and her husband had just bought the property as a retirement rental
A MUM-OF-TWO was killed after a 6ft breeze block garden wall fell on top of her while she was weeding.
Jayne Chaffey, 59, died while working on the property near Aberdare, which she and her husband had bought as a retirement rental a month before.
An inquest heard how Chaffey had been “joyfully weeding and decluttering” plants from the garden of the hillside village when a strong breeze reportedly brought the wall crashing down.
Only moments before she had declared she’d “earned a glass of Prosecco” for her hard day's work.
Her husband Andrew, a retired police sergeant, said: “We liked the property and on coming away we knew there were a few minor maintenance issues but the main thing to fix was the rear garden."
He was trying to secure a wooden fence next to the wall after he noticed it was leaning into the garden.
I saw Jayne was sat up. She looked like she had passed out.
Andrew Chaffey
He pushed the fence with a metal pole but suddenly heard a big bang behind him and his panicked friend shouting: “Jayne”.
reported Mr Chaffey saying: “The soil we were on started to give way and we started to fall. I saw Jayne was sat up. She looked like she had passed out.”
The inquest heard Mr Chaffey saw his wife’s head roll to one side as he felt blood on her clothes.
He desperately attempted CPR on her until emergency services arrived.
She was almost immediately rendered deeply unconscious
Andrew Barkley, Coroner
Chaffey was rushed 18 miles to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, but she died the following morning, on October 15.
A post-mortem examination found she died from a lack of blood to the brain due to a cardiac arrest from a spinal injury.
Coroner Andrew Barkley deemed it a death caused by an accident.
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He said: “Mrs Chaffey suffered catastrophic and unsurvivable and devastating injuries both to her brain and to her spine.
“She was almost immediately rendered deeply unconscious.”
Police found there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the wall’s collapse.
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