A 39-year-old woman from northeastern England tragically lost her life when an ottoman bed malfunctioned and fell on her neck, leading to asphyxiation, according to a coroner’s report. Helen Davey, who operated a beauty salon, died in June while leaning over the storage space of a gas-lift ottoman bed.
Coroner Jeremy Chipperfield stated that the bed’s mattress platform fell unexpectedly, trapping Davey’s neck against the base panel. Unable to escape, she succumbed to positional asphyxia due to a defect in one of the gas-lift pistons.
Davey’s daughter, Elizabeth, discovered her mother. In court, she recounted finding the bedroom door open and her mother lying on her back with her head trapped beneath the bed. Despite struggling to lift the heavy bed to free her, Elizabeth noticed her mother’s face was blue, and she had an indent on her neck. She attempted CPR, realizing her mother was not breathing.
Chipperfield wrote to the UK’s business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, expressing concerns over the safety of gas piston mechanisms in beds, warning that without intervention, similar tragedies could occur in the future. Under UK law, coroners are required to notify the appropriate organizations if they believe that action is necessary to avert future deaths.
According to data from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), in 2022, 147 individuals died from falling out of bed, while another 18 fatalities were attributed to accidental suffocation or strangulation in bed.