A teenage mechanic has committed suicide after co-workers at an Audi garage put him in a cage and set him on fire during six months of relentless bullying, an inquest heard.
George Cheese, 18, was initially “over the moon” when he started his position at the car dealership, but his parents started to notice him coming home covered in bruises and holes burned into his clothes.
A coroner was told that the teenager said on one occasion, his colleagues had forcibly locked him in a cage at the garage, doused him in a flammable liquid and set fire to his clothes.
His father, Keith Cheese, told the inquest George had been pacing around the house saying “”I have to quit, I can’t go back there” over and over again the evening before his death in April last year.
At the time, Mr Cheese told his son not to resign from his job because things would get better – a comment he now deems “ridiculous”.
He told the inquest he would never forgive himself for missing the warning signs leading up to George’s death, including his son trying to talk to him the day he killed himself, but Keith had not looked up from the pre-recorded golf tournament on the TV.
George’s mother, Purdy Cheese, said she had been aware of his declining mental health and had ensured he took his medication up until the final days before his death when she had fallen ill.
She added that it had been the verbal taunts more than the physical injuries that hurt George the most. When his colleagues learnt he had previously taken an overdose of his medication, comments such as “take your happy pills George, you’re going to need them” became common.
His boss even greeted him saying, “Oh, so you are alive after all”.
When George complained to his boss, he said the man simply replied with: “Those naughty boys, I have told them about this” and no further action was taken – despite his boss seeing him the day he got locked in the cage and walked away from the distressing scene laughing.
Service manager Julie Adams of the Reading mental health team said that during a call to George after his first overdose, he had said his employers “could really take it too far sometimes”, to the point when it “actually got a bit dangerous”.
The young man’s line manager, Simon Wright, admitted to playing “pranks” on George.
“I was in the workshop when a prank was played on George and he was set on fire,” he told the inquest.
“It did not go too far. We knew where to draw the line.
“It was not bullying.”
The inquest continues.
