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MISSING: THE FIRM BEHIND ‘KILLER’ WALL
Contractor cannot be found, inquest into boy’s death told
A BRICK wall which killed a two-year-old boy when it collapsed in a gale had been held together with little more than two metal ties resembling coat-hangers, an inquest has heard.
It had been checked twice by surveyors in the six months before it was knocked over by high winds in January, without any serious defect being recorded.
As a coroner’s inquest into the death of little Saurav Ghai began on Monday, it emerged that the contractor which worked on the boundary wall of the Wendling estate in Southampton Road, Gospel Oak, cannot be traced.
Housing chiefs do not know whether the firm Chatterton even finished its contract with the council in the late 1990s, a deal which to a small firm would have been a lucrative guarantee of regular repair work.
Also missing from the inquest at St Pancras Coroner’s Court is the council official who ordered the wall to be worked on. Edwin Craddock has not responded to a court summons despite previously having given evidence to an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive.
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