A NIECE told an inquest of the fatal fall in a Tesco car park that killed her elderly aunt.

Elizabeth Holding was putting Evelyn Smith’s shopping in the back seat of a car while her 82-year-old relative caught her breath after a trip round the supermarket’s aisles.

“I turned round to see her falling straight backwards in the car park. She hit her head with a loud bang. She was simply standing and fell back,” said Mrs Holding in a statement read out at the inquest into Mrs Smith’s death.

Paramedics and police helped the elderly woman and Mrs Smith was taken by ambulance to York Hospital, where despite all the staff could do, she died on May 17.

Mrs Holding told the inquest that she had taken Mrs Smith, a retired cook from Acaster Malbis, shopping at Tesco’s Askham Bar branch on May 9.

Mrs Smith whose health had deteriorated following the recent death of her husband, was “extremely out of breath” as she wheeled her shopping out, and her niece put the shopping in her car for her. Medical evidence before the inquest showed that Mrs Smith broke her skull in the fall.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, coroner Donald Coverdale said she had not tripped.