Stafford fireworks blaze boss 'heard huge explosion'
The boss of a fireworks factory told police of hearing a ‘boom’ and the air being sucked in before a fireball caused a massive explosion that killed an employee and customer, a court heard.
Richard Pearson said he recalled seeing the customer ‘frozen in time’ and yelled at him to get out. He then went to help him before realising his own hands were ‘horribly burned’.
The blast at SP Fireworks in Baswich, near Stafford, on October 30, 2014, scattered ‘burning balls’ across the floor.
Pearson, aged 44, who is charged with two counts of manslaughter by gross negligence, told police in a prepared statement seven months later that he realised he must get out and crawled towards the door.
Outside someone threw water over him and he shouted there were two more people in the building.
The businessman who was in hospital for several weeks suffering from severe burns, said his memory had been affected by his injuries and that he suffered flashbacks.
“I didn’t wake up till mid-November,” he told police. Asked to describe the incident, he said it was ‘the loudest, biggest explosion’ he had ever heard, with large orange flames engulfing the front of the shop.
He claimed he could not recall telling ambulance staff on the night of the fire that he would go to prison for what had happened. “I was in shock and may have said anything,” he said.
Stafford Crown Court also heard that he could not remember suggesting a third party had thrown a lit firework into the unit.
He told police he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, which ‘had paralysed’ his brain and affected his mental health.
He was still receiving skin grafts two years after the fire at Tilcon Avenue Industrial Estate and having treatment for kidney problems.
More than 50 firefighters battled to contain the blaze at the warehouse where it is estimated £10,000 worth of fireworks were being stored.
Earlier the court heard Pearson had taken a large delivery of fireworks from China just days earlier in the run-up to Bonfire Night and Diwali which was stored at a second site in Lower Drayton Farm, near Penkridge.
Pearson, of Holyrood Close, Stafford, denies causing the death of employee Simon Hillier, 41, and customer Stuart Staples, 57, both from Hednesford, by gross negligence in failing to take reasonable care in the storing and handling of explosives.
