Mother on School Run Died After Crane-Loaded Bricks Fell on Her Head, Old Bailey Told

A mother who was walking along a pavement during the school run suffered fatal injuries when a large consignment of bricks fell from a tower crane and struck her on the head, a jury at the Old Bailey has heard. Michaela Boor, 29, was on Burdett Road in Bow, east London, on the morning of 27 March 2018 when the incident occurred. She sustained a fractured skull and died in hospital two days later, on 29 March. The case, which opened at the central criminal court on Monday, has placed the safety practices of a residential construction project under intense scrutiny.

Higgins Homes is standing trial charged with corporate manslaughter and a health and safety offence. Four construction workers contracted by the company — Thomas Anstis, Stephen Coulson, Dawood Maan and Alexander McInnes — face the same charges. Both the firm and the four individual defendants deny all allegations, and the trial, presided over by a judge at the Old Bailey, is expected to continue for several weeks.

Opening the prosecution case, Alexandra Healy KC told jurors that Boor had been walking towards a row of shops with a friend, Chelsea Mustafa, when the bricks descended on them without warning. The two women were following a route that took them past a construction site being developed by Higgins Homes plc, the court heard. Healy described how a pallet of bricks being transported by a tower crane towards a loading bay immediately adjacent to the pavement along Burdett Way came loose and fell onto the pedestrians below.

The court was told that the pallet caught on scaffolding while it was being hoisted, a snag that dislodged the bricks and sent them plummeting towards the street. The prosecution alleged that the crane operator, McInnes, had only a restricted view of the load throughout the manoeuvre, and that the operation effectively became a "blind lift" once the load moved completely out of his line of sight. That term describes a lifting operation where the person controlling the crane cannot see the load or its landing point, relying instead on signals or radio communication from another worker.

Healy recounted the differing fates of the two friends in vivid terms. She said Mustafa ran into the road, away from the construction site, and although some bricks struck her on the back and her hand, she managed to avoid the bulk of the falling load. Boor, however, did not make it off the pavement. She was hit by the falling bricks, which fractured her skull and caused what the prosecutor described as catastrophic brain injuries.

The court heard that Boor received emergency treatment at the scene before being taken to the Royal London Hospital. Despite the efforts of medical staff, her injuries were assessed as unsurvivable, and she died on 29 March 2018, two days after the incident. The prosecution's account paints a picture of a routine morning walk that ended in tragedy within seconds, on a street where members of the public were passing close to active lifting operations.

Higgins Homes was the principal contractor and designer of the project to build a block of flats at the site, the jury was told. Principal contractors bear significant legal responsibilities under British health and safety law, including the duty to plan, manage and monitor construction work so that it is carried out without risks to health and safety, and to ensure that the public is protected from site hazards. The prosecution alleges that there had been no risk assessment for lifting pallets of bricks so close to members of the public, and that Higgins Homes had not properly considered the safety of people outside the site boundary.

"Higgins Homes failed to give proper consideration to the protection of the public," Healy told the court, a claim the company disputes. The prosecution's case appears to rest on the contention that the risks of operating a tower crane over or alongside a busy public pavement were foreseeable and should have been addressed through planning, exclusion zones, barriers or revised lifting methods before any load was moved.

The court also heard details about the roles of the four individual defendants. Anstis, 69, of Banstead, Surrey, was the senior site manager and temporary work co-ordinator, responsible for running the building site and overseeing the work of subcontractors. The prosecutor alleged that evidence showed he "cut corners" in order to save money — an assertion that will be central to the case against him and one that his legal team is expected to contest.

Coulson, 69, of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, was a director of Coulson Lifting Services and held responsibility for lifting services on the project. The court was told that he was not present at the site on the day of the incident, a fact that may feature in arguments about his individual culpability. Maan, 61, of Ashford, Kent, served as the crane supervisor, tasked with overseeing and supervising lifting operations at the site, while McInnes, 34, of Islington, north London, was the crane operator at the controls when the pallet fell. All four men deny the charges against them.

Corporate manslaughter cases are relatively rare in England and Wales and require prosecutors to prove that an organisation's activities were managed or organised in a way that caused a person's death and amounted to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care. Health and safety offences, by contrast, focus on failures to meet statutory duties and do not always require proof of such a serious departure from acceptable standards. If convicted, a company can face substantial fines calculated under sentencing guidelines that take turnover and culpability into account, while individuals convicted of health and safety offences can face imprisonment or unlimited fines depending on the severity of the breach.

The incident occurred in March 2018, meaning the case has taken several years to reach trial, a delay not unusual in complex investigations involving multiple defendants, expert evidence and detailed scrutiny of construction practices. For the family of Michaela Boor, the proceedings at the Old Bailey represent the first public examination of the circumstances that led to her death, and the prosecution's opening statement has now set out the factual framework that jurors will consider.

The trial continues.