Two brothers die five months apart after choking on meat

A man choked to death on a piece of meat barely five months after his brother died in exactly the same way, an inquest has heard.

Selwyn Francis passed away after struggling with his food at a restaurant in his home county of Flintshire in north Wales. He was 68.

The incident occurred just a day after another inquest was told his younger sibling Gwyn had been killed after choking on a piece of steak at a nearby pub.

A third brother Kenneth had told that hearing the three brothers all ate quickly without chewing their food properly.

“It should be a warning to us all,” he had said of the tragic accident.

The first inquest, held on 3 July, heard Gwyn had suffered a hypoxic brain injury due to cardiac arrest after choking at the Mill Tavern in Flint on 29 January.

Paramedics managed to remove a small piece of meat from the 62-year-old’s throat and performed an emergency tracheotomy, the local Daily Post reported – but he died in hospital some days later.

That followed an earlier incident in 2016 in which Selwyn himself had also choked on a piece of steak at the same venue.

On that occasion, the obstruction had been cleared by someone performing the Heimlich manoeuvre.

Speaking at the new inquest, which was opened at Ruthin County Hall, in Denbighshire, on Wednesday, assistant coroner Elizabeth Dudley-Jones confirmed Selwyn had died on 4 July.

She said the provisional cause of death was, like that of his brother, hypoxic brain injury following a cardiac arrest.

The inquest was adjourned to a date to be fixed.