The family of a labourer who plunged five storeys to his death as he stood on the roof of a 2.5 tonne lift called today for his employers to be prosecuted.
Silviu Radulescu, 31, suffered severe head injuries in the accident at the Victoria building site where he was working on a demolition project.
His family made the call after a jury ruled he was unlawfully killed following a five-day inquest at Westminster coroner’s court. The Health & Safety Executive has launched an investigation, which could lead to criminal prosecution.
Mr Radulescu, from Romania, had only been on the site for a week when he died in January 2011. He was unmarried and worked to maintain his mother, who has health problems, and retired father who live in Romania.
Mr Radulescu’s brother George said: “We cannot believe that the UK has such a bad record of deaths when people are just trying to work to earn money. We hope that criminal proceedings follow this verdict.”
Time sheets showed Mr Radulescu, of London Colney, Hertfordshire, was supplied by MGM Construction Ltd as a labourer for T E Scudder. The site was operated for Carey Group Plc for a Berkeley Homes development. He was part of a team stripping out the Prison Service HQ in John Islip Street.
T E Scudder was contracted to remove seven lifts. The jury heard that after a tea break Mr Radulescu and colleague Viorel Serban went back to work on the lift. His colleagues described how he and Mr Serban were working on top of the lift to raise it manually from the fifth to the eighth floor. The carriage was supported by a two-tonne chain that had snapped, but Mr Radulescu was unaware of this. He was fatally injured when, as he stood on the lift car, it crashed to the bottom of the shaft. Supervisor David Neal told how in the aftermath of the accident he “ran down to the first floor and prised open the door... I could hear one man crying and shouting”.
Mr Serban survived because he wore a harness. Helen Clifford, of lawyers Leigh Day & Co, said: “Mr Radulescu had insufficient training. We expect the police will bring charges.”
T E Scudder said: “The inquest has been traumatic for all parties involved. We take health and safety seriously and will be reviewing fully the implications of a disappointing decision.”
