An electrical engineer killed during Storm Ali was just about to leave Slieve Gullion Park when a 200-year-old beech tree was blown over and crushed him, a court heard.
Newry Crown Court also heard that having parked their work van outside the gates of the forest park after it had just been closed, Matt Campbell (24) and his colleague had gone back in to “make safe” a kiosk they had been working on before they left for the day.
It was then, prosecuting KC Philip Mateer told the court, that the tree was uprooted and fell on Mr Campbell, killing him and causing significant injuries to his colleague.
Mr Campbell had been working for Lagan Construction Ltd and as the park itself is owned and controlled by Newry, Mourne and Down Council, they both face health safety charges.
Just before Christmas last year the council entered guilty pleas to failing to make appropriate risk assessments for non-employees and employees respectively and to failing to ensure, so far as would be reasonable practicable, the health and safety of employees and non-employees on September 19 2018.
On the day that Lagan Construction were due to go on trial in January the company, with offices on the Sydenham Road in Belfast, entered a guilty plea to failing to make an appropriate risk assessment.
Just the week before the tragic accident, Matt and his fiancée Robyn Newberry had sent out ‘save the date’ cards in preparation for their wedding in August 2019 and on the day tragedy struck, she had collected the couples’ wedding rings.
Many of his grieving friends and relatives listened attentively in the public gallery on Thursday.
Mr Mateer opened the facts of the case for the first time, describing how the tree fell “during a severe weather event” where Storm Ali was due to increase in severity and strength as it passed across Ireland.
Despite a weather warning and being part of a multi-agency group which received weather alerts from the Met Office, the council at that stage had a “piecemeal” approach to closing its public parks, essentially leaving it up to the respective facilities to make an assessment whether to close or not.
It was that lack of clarity which formed the basis of their guilty pleas, the court heard but the council’s defence KC Charles MacCreanor stressed that “lessons had been learned” and there was now a clear written approach and risk assessment.
Defence KC Frank O’Donoghue, instructed by Lagan Construction, conceded the risk assessment had focused on the risk of electrocution and flooding as opposed to trees but he submitted however there had been a “dynamic risk assessment” on the day of the incident.
Judge Paul Ramsey KC adjourned passing sentence as “there’s a lot of material that I have to look at and consider…so I will give my decision as soon as I can”.