Man crushed to death at work was 'full of hopes and dreams'
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The mother of a young man crushed to death in a work accident has said her son was "full of hopes and dreams" and his family has been "robbed" of sharing in those with him. Labourer Liam MacDonald, 23, was using a hammer to chip away dried concrete from a skip at a Shetland Islands wind farm site when its bale arm fell on top of him, pinning his chest.
Principal contractor BAM Nuttall has been fined a total of £860,000 after admitting health and safety breaches. Mr MacDonald's mum, Wendy Robson, said: "Liam loved life, his family and friends. He was just at the start of his adult life, still finding who he was, and full of hopes and dreams.
"We have been robbed of having Liam here today, and in all our tomorrows, and in sharing those dreams with him. We will never meet the children he so wanted to have one day. "We can't adequately describe who Liam was, and what he means to us. We love and miss him beyond words.".
The incident occurred at Viking Energy Wind Farm at Upper Kergord on the morning of 5 June 2022. Mr MacDonald, from Tain in the Scottish Highlands, was an agency worker who had been working at the site for more than a month. Colleagues performed CPR and administered a defibrillator, but Mr MacDonald was pronounced dead at the scene.
A court heard how the bale arm weighed 80kg. Jackie Randell, a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector, concluded BAM Nuttall had failed to identify the risks of it falling and failed to put in place a safe system of work to ensure that anyone using, maintaining or cleaning the skip would be protected from harm.
