A “highly qualified” commercial diver and his company have been fined £10,000 over two health and safety offences arising from the death of his father-in-law who was diving in a golf course lake.
Imposing a “nominal” £100 fine on now defunct Golf Balls NI Ltd and a £10,000 fine on its sole director 39-year-old Tom Kieran Best, Judge Fiona Bagnall emphasised a number of times that “nothing I can impose is in anyway capable of equating to the life of Victor Crothers.”
Ahead of her sentencing remarks at Antrim Crown Court, Judge Bagnall paid tribute to the unfortunate man and put on record that she wanted “to pass on my condolences to his family and friends.”
She told the court it was clear from all the information before her that Mr Crothers “was always full of fun, very playful and loved to tell stories to his family.”
Last October Best, from the Finvoy Road in Ballymoney, admitted the health and safety breach while Golf Balls NI ltd, entered a guilty plea to failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare of non-employees on 26 October 2021.
Opening the facts of the case Judge Bagnall outlined how the company was created in 2020 in order to retrieve, clean and sell golf balls from water hazards at various courses throughout the north.
With a pallet of balls fetching £2,000, Best was in charge of the day to day management of the company and was in charge of health and safety aspects given that he was an experienced and highly qualified commercial diver.
While Best was the sole director of the company two other men worked for it - Mr Crothers who was a trained recreational diver and another man who also trained and worked as a police diver.
On 26 October 2021, Best and Mr Crothers were using scuba gear to search the lake at the Hilton Hotel golf course in Templepatrick and they had already retrieved about 1,500 balls when they took a break before re-entering the water around 12pm.
Describing how the lake is around 50 square metres and at its deepest is 2.5metres, Judge Bagnall said that when Best surfaced around 2pm “he noticed that Mr Crothers had not surfaced.”
He went back in to look for his father-in-law but when he could not find him, Best rang 999 and police and the air ambulance attended the scene.
Tragically, it was the police diver who also worked for the company who found the body of his friend, a golf ball in his hand.
Turning to the mechanics of the tragedy, Judge Bagnall said it was clear from the Diving at Work Regulations that “using surface supply breathing apparatus is the preferred and safest method.”
In the incident there were several issues including that he was using scuba gear, the servicing of some of his equipment was out of date and his weight belt was cable tied on which then prevented him from dumping it and impeded him from being able to surface quickly.
Judge Bagnall said it was also clear from the diving at work regulations and guidelines that a team of four was needed to safely conduct a scuba diving exercise.
At interview Best admitted that he had not undertaken a risk assessment.
Best acknowledged that further safety measures should have been put in place such as having a diving contractor and supervisor, a spare oxygen cylinder inspection of equipment, an effective weight harness and a dive plan.