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A Pets at Home employee died four days after getting his head trapped in a horrific accident that left him with a brain injury.

Shaun Potter, from Middleport, suffered severe brain damage when his forklift reversed and caused him to become caught between the machine and the pallets it was carrying at the Stoke on Trent warehouse.

The 39-year-old was flown to the Royal Stoke University Hospital by air ambulance and put on a ventilator, but he lost his fight for life four days later on October 8 last year.

His cause of death was given as hypoxic brain injury and accidental mechanical asphyxiation and entrapment.

Speaking as the two-day inquest got underway yesterday, his brother Richard Potter said Shaun had previously “complained about work and sustained injuries for which he had to go to the walk-in centre.”

The inquest heard Shaun had been a forklift driver since joining the company a year earlier and was given in-house training for his role.

On the day of the incident, he was responsible for putting pallets away.

Witness Paul Bradshaw – an employee at Pets at Home for 10 years – said: “I was three metres away from Shaun.

"He was in a forklift, he put the pallets away and then lowered the forklift to the ground. He had turned out of the position and he was facing out towards the aisle. There’s a screen in the forklift and he was on the wrong screen so I told him what screen he should be on. He had to come out of the original screen.

“I saw he had to get the pallet relocator. He decided to stand up. You would send the forklift up and lower it – he didn’t follow the procedure. He stood up in the cab with his head protruded. He was trying to read the licence number on the pallet whilst being three metres up.

"He got the first three digits but couldn’t make out the rest.

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“When he was reading the digits out I started moving to my truck.

"I sat in the truck and turned myself around, that’s when his forklift went backwards.

"His head got trapped between the cab roof and the aisle rack.

Paul said he ran over to Shaun but was unable to gain access to the cab so shouted for help.

Emergency services attended the warehouse around 1:42pm.

Carly Smith, a paramedic with West Midlands Ambulance Service, said she saw his head was trapped and that he was not conscious on arrival.

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She added that around 2.05pm he was removed from the forklift and a helicopter arrived on the scene to take him to the Royal Stoke University Hospital.

Royal Stoke critical care consultant, Dr Omar Bani-Saad said: “He sustained traumatic brain injury and had a cardiac arrest.

"He was admitted to critical care for supportive management.

"During his time in the ICU he was sedated and on a ventilator.

"He passed away with his family by his bedside.”

The inquest resumes today.

• Inquests
• Ambulances

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