No, this isn’t a Black Mirror episode, a man really was killed by a seat. The scene: Ateeq Rafiq and his partner went to a Birmingham Vue cinema in March 2018. They paid for the premiere seating, but when he went down under the seat to retrieve his jeys and phone a motorised footrest clamped down on him. Staff struggled for fifteen minutes to get him out, but he sustained “catastrophic” brain injury and later died.
An inquest into his death revealed that the safety checks needed to operate the machinery had not been carried out, “If the seat had been fitted and maintained in the correct manner, Mr Rafiq would not have died,”the jury said.
Vue have now pled guilty to charges, been fined thee quarters of a million pounds, and another £130,000 in costs.
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