A father-of-two died after a vehicle he was working under fell and crushed him, a court was told.

James McKenna, 47, who came from King's Lynn, was working on a Ford Ka in the rear garden of his home in Hospital Drove, Long Sutton, when the accident happened.

An inquest at Lincolnshire County Council's offices at Gilbert Drove in Boston heard the car shifted sideways when Mr McKenna used force with a spanner on June 29, 2021.

Mr McKenna’s widow Sally and his parents, Barry and Rosslyn, heard senior coroner Paul Cooper formally conclude that the death was as the result of an accident.

In a written statement heard in court, Mrs McKenna said her husband had gone out to start dismantling the car for scrap at 9.30am.

When he hadn’t come back into the house by 2.30pm to get ready to pick up their teenage children from school she went to look for him.

“I saw James’s legs protruding from under the front of the Ka,” she said. “His legs didn’t move and James didn’t respond to me calling out."

Mr McKenna was pronounced dead at the scene, with a later post mortem finding that he had died from traumatic asphyxia.

Jordan Eagle, a friend of Mr McKenna’s, went to remove the car that night at Mrs McKenna’s request but found it tough to budge.

He then saw the axle stand under the middle of the car, bent and embedded in the soft ground.

In a statement, he said he thought Mr McKenna had been using a spanner to help remove the catalytic convertor and the car had shifted when he used force, causing the axle stand to move and sink, and the car to fall off its jacks.

The coroner said it had been a “tragic accident”, adding: “You can always look back in hindsight and say if he'd been underneath the car on harder ground, he might still be here. But unfortunately you can’t turn back the clock.”