Former drug addict, Dominic Brown, was ‘trapped in flat’
Deceased amputee’s faulty stair lift problems ‘had been going on for months’, inquest is told
Published: 30 September, 2010
by JOSIE HINTON
AN amputee spent his final months “trapped” in his Kentish Town flat after Camden Council failed to fix a broken stair lift, an inquest heard.
Dominic Brown, 44, was found dead in his Islip Street home on May 22 by engineers who had been sent to mend the faulty lift, which had been repeatedly breaking down for several months.
St Pancras Coroner’s Court heard last Wednesday that Mr Brown, who had been fighting a heroin addiction for many years, was unable to use the stairs.
Drugs worker Pauline Seward told the inquest the lift had been a “constant source of problems” for Mr Brown.
“Without the stair lift he was trapped in the flat,” she said. “It had been going on for months.”
Despite the situation, Mr Brown was described as “upbeat” in the days before his death. He had reduced his methadone prescription and when Ms Seward visited him for the last time on May 11 he had been given a date when the lift would be mended.
She told the court: “He was fed up with the situation with the lift but he wasn’t more upset than usual. He had been given a date for it to be fixed. It looked like he could see the end of it.”
But when engineers arrived to mend the lift on May 22 they couldn’t get into the flat. After repeatedly knocking on Mr Brown’s front door, they looked through a window and saw him lying motionless.
They called an ambulance but when paramedics arrived Mr Brown was already dead.
An autopsy revealed he died from methadone toxicity, contributed to by underlying heart disease. Coroner Selina Lynch recorded a verdict of drug dependence.
A spokeswoman for Camden Council said the longest the lift was out of service on any one occasion was three weeks. It was reported as being out of order four times.
The spokeswoman said: “The council acknowledges and is sorry for the problems with Mr Brown’s step-lift. When the step-lift was reported as not working it was repaired as a matter of priority through the emergency repairs system.”
In a letter read out to the court, Mr Brown’s father William Brown paid tribute to his son.
He said: “He was a lovely, handsome teenager and we had great hopes for his life, but it went dramatically wrong when we learned about his addiction.
“He remained a very caring person and there was always hope in our minds that Dominic would recover.
“He had been unwell earlier in the year but we had hoped for a recovery to better health so his death was a great shock to us.”