Treatment delay for fall victim

A man who lay on his front lawn for a day and a night after sustaining fatal head injuries did not receive medical care earlier because his friends thought he was drunk, a coroner has found.

Michael Sonny Wilson, 45, died from brain injuries in Auckland's Middlemore Hospital on March 17 after he fell from a veranda and hit his head on concrete while drinking three days earlier.

Mr Wilson was never fully conscious after his fall, but his friends put his incoherent behaviour down to his excessive drinking.

After the fall at a property in the city, Mr Wilson's friends drove him back to his home and placed him on the ground out the front of his home to sleep.

He was known to drink heavily and to sleep on his front lawn for short periods.

While lying on his lawn, Mr Wilson was breathing but didn't respond when his friends shook him to try to wake him up. At some point during the day, they moved him into the shade before leaving him again to sleep.

It wasn't until the following morning when Mr Wilson was still lying outside that his friends thought something may be wrong and, after moving him inside, called an ambulance.

Mr Wilson arrived at Middlemore Hospital with a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain with doctors later diagnosing him with an "unsurvivable brain injury".

Coroner Deborah Marshall found he did not receive medical attention for a whole day because his neighbours and friends did not think his lying on his front lawn was unusual.

"Unfortunately, Mr Wilson's condition after the fall was put down to alcohol consumption, rather than decreasing consciousness caused by brain injury," Ms Marshall said in her findings, released on Tuesday.

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Treatment delay for fall victim