A waste company boss has been jailed for more than seven years after a worker he was supervising was killed in an industrial shredder.
What happened
David Willis, 29, fell into a shredder designed for wood and commercial waste at Timmins Waste Services (TWS) in Wolverhampton on September 18, 2015.
TWS and yard manager Brian Timmins, 54, who was operating the machine at the time, were found guilty of corporate manslaughter and manslaughter respectively after a trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court last week.
The company was ordered to pay fines of £400,000 plus costs of more than £30,000.
Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on a charge of perverting the course of justice against Timmins and the prosecution decided not to seek a retrial.
Mr Willis’s remains were never found after it’s likely they were sent to landfill along with 80 tonnes of waste the day after the accident.
Court ruling
Sentencing on Friday, judge Mr Justice Jacobs said ‘no words of mine can convey the tragedy’ for the family of Mr Willis, who he called a ‘hardworking young man’ and a ‘devoted son and brother’.
He said what happened wasn’t ‘bad luck’ but instead the result of a ‘complete disregard’ by Timmins and TWS to keep their staff safe.
The trial had heard ‘systemic failures’ led to the ‘horrific’ death of Mr Willis.
CCTV from the day shows Mr Willis being hoisted up to the machine on a JCB digger’s grapple arm.
He told the court: ‘Even if Mr Timmins did not actually know that David Willis was still up there, his conduct in switching on the machine again, without checking whether Dave had come down, was – to use the legal test for gross negligence manslaughter – exceptionally bad.
‘He had not seen David Willis come down from the shredder. He did not lift him down, and he did not see Dave walk past him on the way out.
‘He did not hear Dave say anything to him, such as goodbye. He did not see him pick up his coat and leave the yard.‘
He pleaded guilty
In his evidence, Mr Timmins accepted that he should have checked before switching on the machine again. It is absolutely obvious that he should have done so.
Timmins, who was in the cab of the digger, had told Mr Willis to clear a blockage in the shredder while it was still running.
Mr Willis is seen kneeling down on the edge of the machine, reaching in and then toppling inside.
How he died
He would have been killed instantly by the blades, the court heard.
Footage shows Timmins climb up to the top of the machine and peer inside before climbing back down.
He is then seen phoning Mr Willis and looking around the yard before climbing back into the digger to carry on working.
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Mr Willis’s mum, who lived with her son, called Timmins just before 11pm the same day to ask if he’d seen him but the yard manager said words to the effect of: ‘Not since this morning when he left and walked up the road.’
She reported her son missing to police that night and the following day Simmons instructed his workers to take the waste to a landfill in Cannock, Staffordshire.
Prosecutor Christine Agnew KC said the waste ‘must’ have included the remains of Mr Willis.
Timmins only reported the incident to police two days later after Mr Willis’s coat was found at work by someone else.
