A MOBILE hairdresser was dragged under her own car and killed after reaching inside the SUV outside a client's house and accidentally reversing.

Blanche Mullinger had stepped out, leaving the automatic Mazda CX-5 in reverse and the engine running. 

She grabbed something out the back of the car then reached into the front before accidentally putting her foot on the accelerator.

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With one foot lodged inside, the 57-year-old was dragged under the front wheels of the 1.5 tonne vehicle and died 'within a minute' from a heart attack.

She was pronounced dead the following day at Southampton General Hospital.

Her client Marzena Ozimek told Winchester Coroner's Court that she heard Ms Mullinger scream as she pulled up outside her house for an appointment.

Ms Ozimek said: "I received a call from Blanche and she said she believed she was in front of my house.

"She was on her mobile phone... I saw her so I said I can see you now, you can put down the phone, and I started coming down the stairs.

"As I came downstairs she was still on her phone. She was parked.

"I told her to get off the phone and then as I moved out I noticed Blanche was bending over in the rear offside car door which was open and it appeared that she was grabbing something."

Ms Ozimek said she saw Ms Mullinger go to get back in the driver's seat when the car shot backwards.

"I then heard a scream from Blanche. I started running towards her," she said. 

Ms Ozimek said she banged on neighbours' doors in Bordon to get help and then stopped a man who was driving past as she could not drive and didn't want to try moving the car and cause any more damage.

Police Sergeant Jamie Barron said it appeared from CCTV that Ms Mullinger, from Bordon, had accidentally stepped on the accelerator, after she left the car in reverse instead of park.

He said she may have been 'distracted' from being on her phone at the time of the incident on September 28 last year. 

The court heard she was unmarried and had one son who she had only recently got back in touch with before her death.

Rosamund Rhodes-Kemp, area coroner for Hampshire, said it was a 'dreadful accident' and the main cause of death was hypoxic ischemic brain injury, caused by a 'traumatic cardiac arrest', caused by an 'accidental reversal of car on self'.

Message from the editor

If you would like any help with bereavement, loss or mental wellbeing, here are some helpline numbers:

You can call the Samaritans on 116 123

Child Bereavement UK 0800 028 8840 childbereavementuk.org

Cruse Bereavement Care 0808 808 1677 cruse.org.uk 

Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SOBS) 0300 111 5065 uksobs.org

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Kimberley Barber