‘My life’s been ruined after freak accident in B&Q with runaway trolley’

A mum claims her ‘life has been ruined’ after being smashed in the head by a B&Q customer’s runaway trolley – but can’t claim compensation as the chain won’t hand over CCTV due to ‘data protection’.

Tara Shawbrook, 33, had taken her three children to a B&Q store in Bamber Bridge, Preston, during lockdown to buy boards to renovate the loft area in her house.

After finding the DIY parts she needed, the mum-of-three headed to pick out some screws for her project on another aisle in the store – when her life changed forever.

As she stood picking out fastenings for her home renovation task, a female customer lost control of her trolley filled with 2.4-metre-long skirting boards, according to Tara.

She says the contents of the trolley then hit her on the back of the head and knocked her forward into the metal shelving unit.

Tara said the woman apologised but quickly fled the scene, leaving the mum-of-three dizzy and light-headed.

Feeling instantly affected by the blow to her head on August 30, 2020, Tara drove home where she later collapsed.

She was then taken to A&E by her mother for a suspected concussion where she was immobilised straight away, placed in a head brace and a CT scan discovered a gap in the top of her spine.

Tara remained in hospital for three days before discharging herself due to needing to prepare her children for the new school year ahead.

Tara said the accident at B&Q has ‘changed her life’ and she suffers with the consequences every day, including struggling to walk properly or even get dressed on her own.

She has since been diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) but claims she has been unable to claim any compensation as B&Q have refused to give her the CCTV due to ‘data protection’.

Tara, from Blackburn, Lancashire, said: “This accident has changed my life.

“Every day I suffer but I will have flare-ups that happen randomly and can be affected by things like hormones. For the past three weeks I haven’t been able to walk properly.

“I struggle with getting dressed on my own and I struggle with extreme confusion.

“When my brain is overloaded, I can’t string a sentence together.

“My mum has been cooking for the family for the last three weeks because I haven’t been able to.

“I was a young mum and had my first child at 19. I feel like I have always been up against the judgment of this.

“As a mother, I pride myself on being a good mum and wanted to prove this point wrong and now I can’t even take my children to school.”

Before the accident in B&Q took place, Tara said she had seen the woman pushing the ‘overfilled’ trolley around the store and had already moved her youngest daughter out of the way for fear she could have been hurt.

Tara said: “10 or 15 minutes before the accident happened, I had seen the lady with her trolley at the other end of the store.

“I had actually pulled my youngest child away from her trolley because she had 2.4-metre skirting boards poking out of it in a regular shopping trolley.

“2.4 metres is quite a length – they went from the bottom of the trolley, all the way past her and were sticking out in the air.

“It wasn’t the right trolley for the load she had in it and she wasn’t using the correct trolley for what she was carrying.

“I watched her on quite a few occasions go past members of staff who didn’t bat an eyelid at it.

“I know that B&Q staff health and safety training says that if they see a customer using the wrong equipment, they have to advise them and stop them from using the wrong one.

“She should have been using a flatbed trolley not a standard one.

“She came round the corner of the aisle and lost control of the trolley as she only had the tall skirting board in it so there was no weight to the bottom of the trolley.

“It ricocheted around the corner and whacked me in the back of the head and threw me into the shelving unit.”

Whilst at home caring for her three young children at the time, Tara was left unable to move her head and neck for six weeks and her dizzy spells continued.

She then began to experience vacant seizures – a common sign of epilepsy – which could happen up to 30 times a day.

Tara, a former mobile hairdresser, said: “It took me six weeks to begin to start moving my head again.

“I didn’t collapse anymore but still felt dizzy and I started to have vacant episodes, which I didn’t know were happening.

“It was a vacant seizure which meant that instead of fitting my body would just stop working completely and my body would just stir and twitch and I would not have any awareness of my surroundings.

“If someone touched me or clapped in my face when I was having one of these I wouldn’t know.

“I first had one of these almost instantly when I came out of hospital.”

After months of seizures and her other symptoms getting progressively worse, Tara booked in to see her local GP in November 2020 and was put on a long wait list for an electroencephalogram (EEG) scan.

When she still hadn’t been assessed in June 2021, she experienced a severe vacant seizure whilst out with friends which caused her to lose feeling in her legs and was blue-lighted to hospital for a suspected stroke.

Tara, who is unemployed due to the accident, said: “In the process of waiting for my referral, I went for a number of hospital visits because of the pain I was in. The pain was in my neck and down my spine.

“I then started to get lower back pain too. They gave me morphine, paracetamol, and other pain relief – the list goes on. It would take the edge off it but wouldn’t do a lot.

“The EEG didn’t happen at the time because the referral waiting time was too long.

“The following June 2021 I was still waiting for the scan because I wasn’t marked as a priority.”

After being discharged from hospital the next day, Tara became very unwell and her skin began to turn yellow.

Despite being bumped up and marked as an ‘urgent case’ for a neurological assessment, the waiting list was still 12 months so Tara booked in for an assessment at a private neurological clinic where she was diagnosed with FND.

Tara said: “When I was discharged from hospital, I wasn’t getting any better. My mum was having to look after me at this point.

“I started to turn yellow like a character out of the Simpsons.

“I was struggling to walk, feed myself, dress myself and it was really frightening for everyone around.

“FND only affects the tasks that you do every day. Tasks that I used to do every day without thinking.

“The brain still functions but instead of it being a hardware problem it’s a software problem.

“FND comes from certain things. It can come from past mental trauma but I have been lucky not to experience this.

“They [the neurologist] pointed it to be from physical trauma and the hit of the head by the skirting board.”

The 33-year-old said FND has robbed of being able to do so many things.

Tara said: “Before the accident I was very active.

“Nine years ago, last month I ran the Manchester 10km and I used to love ballet dancing. Now I can’t even get to my bathroom on my own.

“Genuinely day to day I try to make light of the situation.

“My family is very supportive and we try to have a laugh and a joke about what this illness makes me do.

“On other days, the pain is so severe I can’t mentally or physically cope.

“I’m only relatively young and some days I need my walking stick and sometimes I need my wheelchair.

“I feel a bit of a fraud though because sometimes I won’t need to use a stick at all.

“The disease is so complex and it makes me embarrassed as not all the signs are visible.”

Following the incident, Tara said she had reported it to the B&Q store manager who had noted it in the accident book and made a copy of the CCTV footage showing the accident.

However, Tara claims she was unable to receive a copy of the CCTV due to data protection and says she hasn’t been able to make a compensation claim because of this.

B&Q declined to comment.