Pensioner trapped under car in bizarre accident at Whittington Hospital

Published: 7 May, 2010
by JOSIE HINTON

A PENSIONER died following a “bizarre accident” at Whittington Hospital when he became trapped under a nurse’s car as she drove home, an inquest has heard.
John Whelan, 71, of Denton Road, Stroud Green, was taken to the A&E department at the Archway hospital on New Year’s Day after slipping on ice outside his home and hurting his finger.
His injury had been assessed as “minor” and he was thought to be waiting to be seen by a doctor when a bystander spotted something strange attached to the front of a car leaving the hospital car park.
“At first I couldn’t see what it was and I thought it might be some sort of rubbish bag,” she said in a statement to a St Pancras inquest last Thursday. “But then I realised there was a person hanging on the car. I ran towards the car trying to indicate to the driver but by then the victim was trapped underneath the bonnet.”
Choo Mulligan, a nurse at the hospital, was leaving the car park at the end of her shift at about 9.45pm.
She had taken a short-cut and was travelling the wrong way down a one-way street when her car stopped responding and she heard a “scraping noise” coming from underneath.

At the inquest, Ms Mulligan told Mr Whelan’s family she could not explain how he came to be under the vehicle.
“My first thought was that I had a puncture then I saw a lady across the road waving furiously and I thought I had better stop,” she told the inquest. The incident was not caught on CCTV.
Mr Whelan was found under the car and taken back inside the hospital, where he was treated for trauma injuries to his chest and a fractured spine. He died five days later.
Mary Lawrence, Mr Whelan’s partner, told the inquest that when she visited him in hospital following the accident he told her: “She hit me. You should have seen the state of the car.”
But he was unable to explain how he had come to be in front of the bonnet. 
Paul Ient, the hospital’s estate facilities manager, said that, following an internal investigation, changes had been implemented, in­cluding more lighting and CCTV cameras.
Mr Whelan died at University College Hospital after vomiting a large amount of blood, caused by two ulcers in his oesophagus and bruising in his lungs.
Coroner Dr Andrew Reid recorded a verdict of death due to natural causes “to which a bizarre accident also contributed”.