Fruit farm manager Andrew Stocker has been jailed for two and a half years for the manslaughter of two workers found dead after retrieving prize apples from a storage container.
Scott Cain, 23, and Ashley Clarke, 24, died after entering the tank on the Blackmoor Estate in Liss, Hampshire. The oxygen level in the tank was just 1 per cent.
Stocker, 57, of The Links, Whitehill, Bordon, was convicted by a jury at Winchester Crown Court over the deaths on 19 June, but was sentenced this morning (1 July) at the same court.
The estate, meanwhile, was fined £75,000 by the court for breaches of health and safety laws.
The two men got into the storage tank through a small hatch in the roof, and used a practice nicknamed 'scuba diving', which involved workers holding their breath while entering the container. The practice was encouraged by Stocker, the court heard.
Cain, who the court heard was engaged to be married to the mother of his young child, and Clarke, were both found unconscious on top of crates of apples in the storage facility on the afternoon of 18 February 2013.
Efforts by colleagues and paramedics to revive them were unsuccessful, and both were declared dead at the scene.
Mark Dennis QC, prosecuting, told the trial that Stocker, who was on holiday in the Maldives at the time of the incident, had instructed Cain to gather the sample fruit while he was away, so that it could be entered in the Marden Fruit Show.
The court heard that Stocker enjoyed the 'kudos' of winning at the contest rather than claiming the 'modest' financial prizes.
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