As published in the Daily Mirror

Silent Killer Claims Three From Family

Blocked boiler leaked deadly fumes
By Richard Smith
20 May 2006

A MUM told yesterday how she found her son and grandparents dead when she went to check up on them.

McCauley Thomas, five, was curled up lifeless in his pyjamas in bed at the elderly couple's home. Patrick, 71, was lying on the kitchen floor and Hazel Chidgey, 68, was in her nightie on the bedroom floor.

They had been poisoned by carbon monoxide leaking from their coal-fired boiler. It had not been serviced and the chimney was blocked.

McCauley's mum Adele Forbes, 23, had become worried when her grandparents didn't answer the phone.

She said: "I knew deep down something was wrong." Adele said McCauley and his great grandad were devoted, like "two old men together".

Patrick was a boxing trainer and McCauley, who he nicknamed the Champ, loved going to the gym with him. She let him stay over that night as a special treat.

But when Adele could not raise her grandparents she went round to their terraced home with her mum Susan and her mum's partner.

She told an inquest: "I opened the front door and couldn't see anything so I opened it further and walked one or two steps into the passage. I could smell a strong sulphur smell. I seemed to know what happened.

"I told my mother's partner not to turn on lights. He went on in and said, 'phone an ambulance'."

Susan said: "I received a call mobile and the house phone all day, but thought that they probably couldn't find the mobile and couldn't hear the house phone.

"My mum was a little deaf and would always have the TV on at maximum volume from morning into the night." She then picked up Adele to go round to their home in Pontllanfraith, Caerphilly.

Susan said: "The house was in darkness. We went to the front door and as it was opened there was a strong, pungent smell.

"The next thing I remember is running outside and calling an ambulance on the mobile phone." Coroner David Bowen said: "The effects of carbon monoxide poisoning were fast and they would not have suffered."

An investigation showed that carbon monoxide - dubbed the silent killer because it has no smell and can go undetected - had built up in the house from a coal-fired boiler in the kitchen because the chimney was blocked.

Water had leaked into the appliance and combined with soot in the ashes tray to form a solid block stopping gases escaping. The fumes then began leaking into the house. Fumes from the coal probably caused the sulphur smell.

The inquest in Newport, Gwent, heard that the chimney had not been swept and the boiler had not been serviced for "some time".

Mr Bowen recorded verdicts of accidental death and said the tragedy should be a lesson to others. Mr Bowen said: "It should serve as a warning to anybody who has central heating appliances that they should keep them in good condition and have chimney and flues swept regularly.

"If these simple precautions had been taken this tragedy could have been averted."

For further protection, install a Carbon Monoxide Detector in your home to safeguard you from CO poisoning!