A GAS safety installer has been found guilty of killing his girlfriend and ten years old daughter for installing an unsafe generator on his boat.
Matthew Eteson, who was a registered Gas Safe installer, had installed a botched-up petrol generator system on his boat that killed the pair as they slept in a different cabin by carbon monoxide poisoning after the generator leaked gases.
In a different cabin
He was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence by a jury at Preston Crown Court after fitting the generator with an exhaust system that lasted just three and a half minutes when re-fabricated, allowing gases into the cabin where the pair were having an afternoon nap. Etson was sleeping in a different part of the cruiser Arniston away from the leaking gases.
The jury found Etson guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence after fitting an unsafe generator on his boat and poisoning his partner Kelly Webster and that he had previously disabled the carbon monoxide sensors by cutting wires, so the pair were not alerted to the danger.
Well aware
The Court was told that as a registered Gas Safe installer he would have been well aware from his training of the risk to human life of exposure to the carbon monoxide produced by a petrol generator. He failed to secure the generator, and his exhaust system became detached from the pipe-work through a failure of joints with the installation 'exceptionally poor'.
He willl be sentenced at Preston Crown Court on the 13th November.