Great-grandmother, 81, died when her son unknowingly ran her over in Range Rover exterior physician’s surgical procedure, inquest hears

A great-grandmother died after her son unknowingly ran her over in his Range Rover outside a doctor’s surgery, an inquest has heard. 

Celia Adams, 81, died in hospital on February 28 last year, ten days after the incident at the back of the Brynffynnon surgery in Denbigh, North Wales. 

Her son Ian Adams, who was also her carer, said his mother’s mobility was very restricted and she suffered from osteoporosis at the time of her death. 

When he took her for her appointment, he parked his car in a staff parking bay and went to help her out of the vehicle, his statement at an inquest in Ruthin said. 

‘My mother can’t walk very well at all and so I parked by the back door of the surgery,’ he said. 

Knowing he couldn’t stay in the bay, he told Mrs Adams to wait while he went to find a parking spot. He reversed out and didn’t feel a bump, and audible reversing sensors did not sound.

He told police that his mother had fallen several times in the past.

Surgery staff took Mrs Adams – a former bacteriologist and shopkeeper – inside where she told them: ‘I’ve been run over.’ 

Celia Adams, 81, (pictured) died in hospital on February 28 last year in North Wales 

She was taken by ambulance to Glan Clwyd Hospital before being transferred to Stoke.

Her cause of death was given as respiratory failure due to multiple fractured ribs caused in a road traffic collision.  

But John Gittins, senior coroner for North Wales East and Central, said it would be ‘inappropriate’ to record a conclusion of death in a road traffic collision.

He instead recorded a conclusion of accidental death, stating: ‘While the number of injuries Mrs Adams sustained were the result of a collision I also note that this lady had had diagnosis of osteoporisis for many years.

‘It is therefore entirely conceivable that those rib injuries which led to respiratory failure stemmed from her initial fall.’

At the time of her death, Mrs Adams’ family she ‘she was a woman of many talents who had the biggest heart’. They described her as ‘the glue that held us all together’.