Doncaster inquest blames poor construction for Scott Johnson's death

A coroner in Doncaster, Scott Johnson's home town, has found that the stage roof that killed him at Downsview Park in Toronto came down because of the way it was designed and built. Giving her finding on Thursday, Nicola Mundy said that inadequate technical advice on construction and design coupled with wholly inadequate construction techniques led to the collapse of the roof system, which caused Mr Johnson's death⁴.

Johnson, Radiohead's drum technician, was 33 when the roof collapsed on 16 June 2012, before a Radiohead show that was then cancelled. The Toronto inquest ended in April with a verdict of accidental death, which the band called frustratingly insufficient because the collapse had been shown to be preventable. Recording a narrative conclusion, Mundy said that verdict did not fully reflect the thrust of the evidence⁵.

Phil Selway was at the hearing, with Keane's drummer Richard Hughes, and remembered Johnson as a lovely person, very sunny and very professional⁶.

His father, Ken Johnson, said the Doncaster finding was exactly what we needed someone to say.³ I am pleased that the obvious was stated in regard to the series of errors that murdered Scott.¹ Scott's mother, Sue, he said, will never forgive them for what happened. To some degree it felt like the end of the paperwork, but he still needed to know it could not happen again.