Tragedy of grandmother’s fatal fall down stairs, aged 51 - Bernadette Bazzoni suffered brain damage
Published: 11 February 2011
by PETER GRUNER
A GRANDMOTHER died 10 months after a fall in her Finsbury home which left her severely brain damaged, an inquest heard.
Bernadette Bazzoni, 51, who had three adult children and worked in the City, was left unable to communicate after falling down the stairs of her home in Steadman Court on the Redbrick estate in January last year, as she made her way to bed.
Mrs Bazzoni was moved to a nursing home in Wharf Road, near her home, but died on October 28 without regaining her speech or eye movement.
An inquest into her death at Poplar Coroner’s Court on Tuesday heard that Mrs Bazzoni was happy and relaxed in the moments before the fall, following an evening spent looking after her grandsons and a day spent celebrating her granddaughter’s first birthday.
During the hearing, Mrs Bazzoni’s daughter-in-law Nicola, a fundraising executive, relived the tragic moment the 51-year-old fell down the stairs as she made her way to bed. She said: “[Bernadette] had been babysitting for the evening. She came into the kitchen to say goodnight to me and Michelle, her daughter. I was standing in the door of the kitchen and as she went to walk down the stairs I just saw her fall. She didn’t call out or scream, but I screamed and then Tony [Mrs Bazzoni’s husband] and Lee [her son] ran past me and down the stairs. They shouted at me to call an ambulance.”
Mrs Bazzoni was in an induced coma for two and a half weeks at the Royal Neurological Hospital in Putney before being transferred to a nursing home in Islington, where she died ten months later.
Coroner Dr Andrew Reid recorded a verdict of accidental death.