A GRIEVING woman has recounted the desperate last words of her fiance as he lay dying after the car he was working on collapsed on top of him.

An inquest heard how Shaun Lock was crushed beneath the vehicle after a jack gave way and how his partner held his arm as he slipped away.

Shaun Lock had raised his Ford Fiesta with three jacks outside the home he shared with Caroline Sutherland in Somerset View Caravan Park, in Taunton Road, Norton Fitzwarren.

Ms Sutherland, who was in bed at the time, rushed outside after being alerted to a problem when she heard a dog barking and Mr Lock, aged 46, screaming.

She told the inquest in Taunton yesterday (Thursday, Sepetmber 15) that her partner was trapped underneath the front of the vehicle, struggling to breath, kicking to the side in a vain attempt to free himself after the jacks collapsed.

She said: "He was being crushed by the car.

"'Try jacking it up,' Shaun shouted and there was desperation in his voice.

"'I'm having a cardiac arrest,' Shaun said.

"I held his arm, but as I did so it went limp and I knew he was dead."

Site owner Dave Taylor ran to get his JCB digger to lift the car off Shaun before paramedics worked on him for an hour but were unable to revive him.

The inquest was told that Mr Lock, a groundsman who was born in Taunton, had proposed to Ms Sutherland, his partner of six years, a month before his death on May 27 and the couple were due to pick up her ring from the jewellers the next day.

"We were going to get married later this year," she said.

"I went to pick up the ring the next day because that's what Shaun would have wanted and he'd bought me a silver locket as well as a surprise."

Somerset's senior coroner Tony Williams said a post mortem showed the cause of Mr Lock's death was asphyxiation with the mechanical compression of the chest, while amphetamine intoxication had contributed to his death, although it was not directly related to the cause.