A BLAENAU Ffestiniog pensioner died after suffering a spinal injury after falling down her stairs at home, an inquest heard.

Jeannie Josephine Chalmers, who lived at Bethania, died on 12 April this year at Stoke Hospital.

The 88-year-old’s daughter, Irene Kilhams, told the inquest that she found her mother on the bottom of the stairs at her home on the evening of 11 April.

She said: “That evening we had all watched television together and after that we went into the kitchen where my mum made a cup of coffee and said she was going to go upstairs.

“It was then I heard a big thump and when I went to see what had happened I saw my mum at the bottom of the stairs.

“She was lying face down, her glasses were broken and she was bleeding heavily from the head.

We thought she only could have gone up three steps as she always walked slowly up there and held on to the banister, but we think she managed to get up further as there was a coffee mark half way up the stairs on the wall.

“She was blue when my daughter called the ambulance and they told me to roll her over and start giving her CPR and then the paramedics arrived.”

Mrs Kilhams said her mother had no history of falling and went walking every day with a stick to help her with her balance.

North West Wales coroner Dewi Pritchard-Jones told the inquest that cases such as this were extremely common with elderly people.

A medical report from Stoke Hospital revealed that Mrs Chalmers had died from a hypoxic brain injury caused by damage to the top part of her spine when she fell down the stairs.

Mr Prichard-Jones said: “I receive lots of cases such as this one where an elderly person has lost their balance and slipped which has then led to their death.

“Mrs Chalmers fell for no obvious reason and was an entirely unexpected event. The fall led to her receiving the head injury which led to her death.

“Mrs Chalmers died as a result of an accident.”