{"id":446055,"date":"2026-05-26T13:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/446055\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T13:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:18:12","slug":"worksafe-investigator-on-why-roller-door-fell-killing-pastor-helen-verry-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/446055\/","title":{"rendered":"WorkSafe investigator on why roller door fell, killing pastor Helen Verry"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week Lightburn said the installation of the door at Church Unlimited in West Auckland caused it to be \u201changing by its fingernails\u201d.<\/p>\n

The heavy end of the door was installed with a bracket connected to structural timber through a plywood \u201cpacker\u201d.<\/p>\n

That packer was used to make sure the door was installed on a straight and even plane.<\/p>\n

But the door\u2019s installer, who was a Scotty Doors employee, used 75mm screws through a 13mm packer, which meant that side\u2019s fixings weren\u2019t embedded as much into the wall.<\/p>\n

The screws were also placed in a precarious position that led it to not support the door\u2019s weight, Lightburn detailed.<\/p>\n

The slump<\/p>\n

Photos of the door that came to light with the inquest, after the 2024 prosecution, show that the rolled-up door had \u201cslumped\u201d around 200mm down by mid-December 2021, a month-and-a-half before Verry died.<\/p>\n

On that evidence, and further investigation, Lightburn believed that by that time, the rolled-up door had failed, was no longer attached, had slumped forward and was jammed into place.<\/p>\n

It was possibly caught, and held up, by an adjacent bolt in the wall or the curved lip of the door\u2019s vertical tracks, or both, he reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cEffectively just hanging on by its fingernails,\u201d Lightburn repeated.<\/p>\n

The inquest also heard that the fuse operating the door had blown prior to Verry\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

If Verry pulled on the door\u2019s manual chain in an attempt to roll it down, which had been previously reported<\/a>, that extra force could have caused the locked-up, failed door to fall.<\/p>\n

In the inquest, Church Unlimited has been criticised for its own internal investigation into the fatal accident.<\/p>\n

SDL Limited lawyer James Cairney asked Lightburn what the investigator thought of the church board\u2019s internal inquiries into what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally, very poor … below what I would have expected,\u201d Lightburn answered.<\/p>\n

The church staff around the door over that Christmas period told the inquest they had not noticed the slump.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was there to be seen if people had looked,\u201d Lightburn pointed out.<\/p>\n

\"ChurchChurch Unlimited senior pastor and board chair Tak Bhana. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Tak Bhana<\/p>\n

Church Unlimited senior pastor Tak Bhana gave evidence on Monday, beginning by offering his condolences to Verry\u2019s grieving husband, who has sat at the front of the inquest throughout.<\/p>\n

\u201cHelen was incredibly special; I don\u2019t need to tell you that … She was loved by the church, dearly loved by the staff, maybe one of the most popular,\u201d Bhana expressed tearfully.<\/p>\n

At the start of the inquest, <\/a>Tim Verry asked why Bhana had not released a public statement on his wife\u2019s death, given he was the church\u2019s \u201cCEO\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also asked why the church hadn\u2019t strengthened its health and safety practices in the wake of his wife\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Bhana said before and after the accident his church was \u201crisk adverse\u201d and focused on \u201ccontinual improvement\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe we have done our due diligence as this accident shook us to our core,\u201d Bhana said.<\/p>\n

Lawyer Katherine Anderson KC, who is assisting the coroner, asked if pastor Kathleen Wollett, who watched the \u201chighly traumatic event\u201d, was the best person to lead the church\u2019s investigation response.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought she was the best person,\u201d Bhana confirmed.<\/p>\n

Noticing the door was degrading or needed maintenance was outside the \u201cscope\u201d of their expertise, Bhana explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really depend on the experts … that [the door is] structurally sound,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just trust that they put it up [correctly].\u201d<\/p>\n

The inquest concludes today.<\/p>\n

Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She\u2019s currently based in Auckland covering justice related stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week Lightburn said the installation of the door at Church Unlimited in West Auckland caused it to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6259,13989,42,32576,60505,11156,43,90,9010,92024,40,38,41,39,106954,4276,17705],"class_list":["post-446055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-door","tag-fell","tag-headlines","tag-helen","tag-investigator","tag-killing","tag-news","tag-on","tag-pastor","tag-roller","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-verry","tag-why","tag-worksafe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}