Workplace Accident

A worker has died after the heavy-lorry tyre he was fitting exploded in his face.

The man, named locally as 27-year-old Martin Bacon, was inflating the tyre on a 17-tonne tanker at an industrial estate in Sudbury, Suffolk, when the accident happened.

Two ambulance crews and an air ambulance rushed to the scene to treat the man but he was later pronounced dead.

Colleagues of the deceased man said he was an employee of Great Cornard firm Dial-A-Tyre.

A spokesman for Chilton Grain, which owns the entire site in Waldingfield Road, said the man had been on the site changing the tyre on the tanker lorry for about an hour.

"While he was inflating the tyre on the heavy lorry it failed and exploded. The force hit him in the head and he was knocked under the trailer," he said.

"Ambulance crews spent about 20 minutes trying to revive him."

Suffolk Police are treating the death as an industrial incident and the Health and Safety Executive have started an investigation.

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David Urpeth from law firm Irwin Mitchell said: "This was a terrible workplace accident in which resulted in a man losing his life.

"Employers have a duty to carry out risk assessments and then implement a safe system of work designed to ensure that workers are not injured or killed in a work accident. Work equipment including protective equipment, should be provided to minimise the risks of injury.

"I regularly represent workers in claims for compensation following injury or death caused by an industrial accident."