A CORONER has warned that using a standard “scissors” style car-jack on its own to hold up a car is not safe after hearing a man died when a car he was working underneath fell on top of him.
The inquest into the death of Zygimantas Grabys (31) heard he usually put a tyre underneath the car as well as the jack, but on this occasion he did not.
The incident happened on May 2nd last, the bank holiday weekend, when Mr Grabys, who was originally from Lithuania, decided to work on the brakes on his wife Lina’s Renault Megane car. His wife had gone to work and he rang her at 10.30am to say the garage was closed as it was a bank holiday, and he would do the work on the brakes himself.
The car was parked outside their home in Inniscrone Mews, Avenue Road, Dundalk, Co Louth.
A short time later she was called home by neighbours who had found him lying on the ground under the car.
Dundalk Coroner’s Court heard from Valdas Kalausis, who had called to visit friends who were neighbours of the deceased. He said he had seen the body and legs of Mr Grabys coming out from underneath the body of the car.
He said hello to him, and then saw his left ear was blue and he was lying in a pool of blood.
The car was on top of his head, he said. The car-jack and a tyre were on the ground as well.
In reply to coroner Ronan Maguire, the witness said the jack lay on the ground beside the wheel. Mr Kalausis said the deceased “was always working on cars, and every time he put the tyre underneath – except this time”.
The court heard how neighbours had lifted up the car and pulled Mr Grabys from underneath it. One neighbour spotted a Garda car, and gardaí used first aid equipment and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on Mr Grabys until an ambulance with paramedics arrived.
Garda Hugh McNulty said the car-jack was a scissors-style one but was “not the one for the Renault”.
Pathologist Dr John Ryan said death was due to severe skull fractures and severe head injuries including injuries to the brain.
He told Mr Grabys’s widow her husband would have been unconscious instantly and would have died within minutes.
Recording a verdict of accidental death, the coroner said it was a tragic accident, and while the deceased was “used to working on cars he normally put a wheel under the hub and for some reason this time he didn’t”.
He said a jack “on its own is never sufficient” to hold a car up safely. He expressed his sympathies to Mr Grabys’s widow and family. Garda Insp Leo McGinn of Dundalk expressed sympathies to the Lithuanian and Polish communities in Dundalk.
