Lift tragedy of 25-stone woman

A woman plunged to her death in a lift after the cable snapped under her weight, and inquest was told yesterday. The elevator carried 25-stone wheelchair-bound Peggy Hitchen, 78, into her bedroom from the downstairs living room of her home.

But she died after a steel cable severed in April. Her grandson Alex, 13, raised the alarm after he found her lying in agony in her lift. Mrs Hitchen died in Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton, Somerset, hours later from massive internal bleeding.

Yesterday her son Pete, 44, said: "It was extremely difficult to get her out. In the end nine of us including my wife and our son used a huge carrying sheet to get her out."