Dad, 28, killed after digger hit power line
A FATHER-OF-TwO died after being electrocuted when a crane on top of the digger he was driving hit a live overhead power line.
Matthew Drummond, 28, was killed after he backed his digger into the cable at Heaton Farm in Middleton on April 8 last year. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
An inquest into the tragedy heard that the farmer who desperately tried to save Mr Drummond suffered a major electric shock himself and ended up in hospital after being thrown backwards. Mr Drummond’s wife Claire, a GP at Ramsbottom Group Practice, last saw her husband the morning of his death.
During the Heywood hearing she said: “That morning he was absolutely fine. He was his normal happy and chatty self. He was excited about the job because he might get more work from this man. we said we would meet up for lunch but I didn’t hear from him.”
Farmer David Heywood told how he first thought the young man was having a heart attack.
He said: “I started to walk towards the wagon. I could see him and I thought he was having a heart attack. I said “what’s wrong with you?”
Mr Heywood explained that as he walked towards Mr Drummond, who lived at Shuttleworth near Ramsbottom, he felt what seemed to be an electric shock.
He recalled: “I felt tingling in my arms and realised what it was. I shouted ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you’ and I was thrown backwards over some rubble.”
The father-of-three ran to his car to get his phone and called the police shortly before 2.30pm. A helicopter, ambulance and the police then arrived.
Mr Heywood was taken to hospital where he stayed overnight.
Asked about whether the electrical lines had appropriate warnings on them, the farmer said: “The power lines were very obvious as we entered the field.”
Mr Drummond was moving sand to the farm which Mr Heywood planned to use it to fill in ruts in his fields when the crane came into contact with the overhead wire.
Mr Heywood was in his car at the time checking on his young daughter and only realised Mr Drummond was in danger when he turn around.
A toxicology report showed Mr Drummond had trace levels of the sedative promethazine in his blood.
But the report also noted the risk of this having an adverse affect on Mr Drummond was low.
Proceeding