Hugo Boss fined £1.2 million as heavy mirror killed boy

London: The popular designer brand, Hugo Boss, has been fined £1.2 million over the death of a four-year-old boy who was killed when an 18-stone mirror crushed him in a shop changing room.

Austen Harrison died after he suffered severe head injuries when the 7ft mirror, weighing 18 stones, which had been left standing free rather than being attached to a wall, toppled on to him at a Hugo Boss store in Bicester Village, Oxfordshire.

The fatal incident took place when the little boy visited the the show room with his parents, Simon and Irina Harrison, on June 4, 2013, The Telegraph said. Austen, from Crawley, West Sussex, had an irreversible brain damage an succumbed to it four days later at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.

An inquest concluded that the mirror should have been fixed to a reinforced wall, while coroner Darren Salter described the incident as “an accident waiting to happen”.

Hugo Boss admitted offenses under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

At Oxford Crown Court Judge Peter Ross said on Saturday, “it would have been obvious to the untrained eye” that the mirror posed a risk, saying it was “nothing short of a miracle” that it had not fallen before.