CHEEMA: BOILER OF DEATH OWNER WALKS FREE

A takeaway shop owner who used a faulty gas heater which killed a 16-year-old girl was spared jail today (Tues).

Amman Cheema, 36, kept the un-serviced 30 year-old storage heater in the store room of Erith Fried Chicken which pumped out deadly carbon monoxide fumes.

Chelsea Wright was killed and her friend Tom Hoyne, then 17, was left critically ill after spending the night at the shop in 2009.

Cheema found the pair as he arrived to open up on the morning of March 16.

Both had been exposed to acute levels of the gas which had poisoned their blood.

Chelsea was pronounced dead at the scene, but Tom,  a part-time worker at the shop, was saved after being rushed to hospital and undergoing intensive treatment.

Now aged 19, he has been left with extensive health problems, including a severe loss of his hearing.

He was at the Old Bailey with his family to see Cheema sentenced for contravening a health and safety regulation.

Judge Peter Rook QC suspended a six-month jail term for two years, but ordered Cheema carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.

He was also ordered to pay £10,000 in prosecution costs and £5,000 towards his own defence costs within the next 12 months.

The judge did not order Cheema to pay any compensation as there are ongoing civil matters and the businessman had an insurance policy in place.

Judge Rook said it was a ‘truly tragic case’.

‘This could easily have been avoided had you had the appliance properly serviced,’ he said.

‘It is well known carbon monoxide can escape from faulty gas appliances and can lead to a high risk of serious injury or death.’

Cheema’s family had owned the heater for around nine years before the incident, but it had been manufactured in 1980 and some of its parts had never been replaced.

It was not burning gas properly and it was producing fatal levels of carbon monoxide when it was used.

A safety switch which should have closed off the gas valve was not working correctly and a butter knife was used as a make-shift clamp to keep the gas cylinder attached to the heater.

‘You left two young people in a store room on a cold night when there was a strong possibility it would be re-lit,’ the judge said.

‘You knew it was an old heater and had not been serviced and you gave no warning. You quite clearly didn’t take practical steps to ensure the heater was safe.’

The court heard Cheema had been Tom and Chelsea in the shop in Erith Road, Bexleyheath, Kent, in to the early hours of March 16 2009, but allowed them to stay at the property overnight rather than return to their homes.

The store room was only 17m-square, had no windows and little ventilation.

The heater, which Cheema had brought from his family home around six months earlier, could fill it with fatal levels of carbon monoxide within 16 minutes.

Tom told police he had used the heater to warm the room after Cheema had left, but turned it off when Chelsea fell asleep on the sofa. He then went to sleep close to her on the floor.

When Cheema returned at 11am he saw the teenagers unconscious and could hear a ‘hissing’ noise coming from the heater.

Police and ambulance crews were called to the scene, but Chelsea was pronounced dead a short while later.

A post-mortem revealed she had a carbon monoxide saturation level of 73 per cent in her blood, well above the 50 per cent which can be fatal.

Tom had a saturation level of 86.

Michelle Nelson, prosecuting, said he was ‘very fortunate to survive’.

‘The defendant did not intend or desire these two young people to suffer the dreadful fate they did, but he failed in his duty as an employer when he took the gas heater to the shop as he had taken no reasonable steps to ensure it was in a safe condition,’ she said.

The court heard Cheema had no safety certificates for any of the gas appliances at the premises and there is no record of any checks being carried out.

He had leased the shop in July 2008 and subsequently met Tom and then Chelsea.

Cheema was forced to close and sell-up following the incident.

He was charged with Chelsea’s manslaughter on the grounds of gross negligence, but was cleared after the prosecution offered no evidence against him.

He was cleared of causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Hoyne after the prosecution offered no evidence.

A further charge of perverting the course of justice was ordered to lie on file.

It had been claimed he approached Mr Hoyne, of Fendyke Road, Belvedere, Kent, on October 12 2009 and told him to make a statement saying he did not want to continue supporting the grievous bodily harm charge.

The court heard Cheema, of Earl Road, Gravesend, Kent, who has recently been staying at address in (16) Keble Grove, Broadway Park, Walsall, West Midlands, felt ‘extreme sorrow’ and showon ‘clear remorse and empathy’ for both victims.

It is expected he will have to sell a property he owns with his wife in Milroy Avenue, Northfleet, Gravesend, to raise the money to pay the court costs.

ENDS