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A farmer's wife died when her husband dropped a massive steel bucket on her as they tried to mend a broken fence.

Arthur Turnbull was in a mini tractor carrying the half-tonne container when he accidentally pressed the wrong button and released it, crushing mum-of-two Joy, 65.

Her spinal cord was fractured and Mr Turnbull desperately tried to free her, but as rescue crews arrived at the farm, he told them: “I’ve killed her, I’ve killed her.”

It took five firefighters to roll the bucket off her and she died a week later in hospital after her brain was starved of oxygen.

The couple were fixing the fence to stop a herd escaping after a cow charged it.

Mr Turnbull had already used the Manitou Telehandler’s bucket to force two posts into the ground and his wife was holding the third at Bilham House Farm, Hooton Pagnell, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, in June.

He told an inquest : “I had a clear view. I put the bucket seven or eight feet into the air and saw I needed to adjust it. It happened so quickly.

"I can only assume when I moved the bucket I pressed the wrong button.”

No defects were found on the tractor and the inquest jury in Doncaster returned a verdict of accidental death.

The coroner said she would write to the HSE over concerns about the machine’s controls.

Mrs Turnbull’s family said: “She was a loving wife, mum and gran.

"Those who knew her well still feel it very acutely.”