A gardener died of a rare flesh-eating disease four days after a freak fall onto a bamboo cane.
Norman Mackenzie, 68, was working at Darnaway Castle near Scotland’s Forres on 17 September 2024 when he stumbled backwards from a stepladder.
A bamboo cane pierced his groin, embedding a fragment of his jeans deep within the wound.
Mr Mackenzie, a father of two, pulled himself free and, believing it was not serious, continued working for the rest of the day before going home.
However, a rapidly spreading infection quickly took hold, and he died at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary four days later.
The gardener’s cause of death was multi-organ failure, septic shock, and necrotising fasciitis – a flesh-eating bacterial infection.
During a Fatal Accident Inquiry at Elgin Sheriff Court, Sheriff David Harvie said that the accident could realistically have been avoided had a safer working platform been used instead of a stepladder positioned beside a sunken flower bed.
The inquiry was told that Mr Mackenzie, who had worked for Moray Estates for around 40 years, misjudged the bottom step of the ladder as he descended, leading to his fatal fall.
He attended Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin two days later after suffering increasing pain and swelling. Scans showed the injury reached from the scrotum towards the abdomen, but did not reveal that a small piece of denim from his jeans had been driven into the wound.
By the following day, his condition had deteriorated sharply. Blood tests showed severe infection, and emergency surgery was carried out at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, where surgeons discovered widespread necrotising fasciitis and recovered a fragment of torn denim from the wound.
Large areas of dead tissue from his lower abdomen, groin and scrotum had to be removed in an attempt to halt the infection.
Despite intensive treatment, Mr Mackenzie died on 21 September.
While the inquiry heard evidence that earlier surgery might, with hindsight, have been beneficial if the contamination had been known, Sheriff Harvie concluded that there was insufficient evidence to find that the clinical decisions made by NHS Grampian caused or contributed to Mr Mackenzie’s death.
Instead, the sheriff identified failures in workplace supervision and the use of inappropriate equipment.
He found that there was no clear responsibility for supervising Mr Mackenzie and that he had effectively been left to assess risks himself, despite restrictions on the work he was supposed to be carrying out.
Following the accident, Moray Estates removed bamboo canes from its sunken gardens and flower beds, tightened accident reporting procedures, strengthened supervision arrangements and reviewed its risk assessments with external health and safety advisers.
Sheriff Harvie made no formal recommendations, noting that significant changes had already been implemented by both Moray Estates and NHS Grampian following Mr Mackenzie’s death.
The sheriff offered his condolences to both Mr Mackenzie’s family and friends.
