Coroner Jessica Swift has concluded in Manchester Coroners’ Court that the 2025 death of Manchester PR Jen Higgins, co-founder of the city’s Carousel PR, who was killed by a falling branch from a tree in the city’s West Didsbury district, was “nothing short of a tragic and devastating accident that occurred that day.”
The court heard how Higgins and her husband and co-founder Gawen Higgins were walking side-by-side down Didsbury’s Barlow Moor Road when they heard “a large cracking noise” and had “no time to take evasive action.”
He added: “I was in a state of shock – Jen was on the pavement and not responding.”
READ MORE: “An unthinkable tragedy”: PR and media industry mourns ‘powerhouse’ Carousel co-founder Jen Higgins
Gawen, who also suffered minor cuts and bruises in the incident, described how an an off-duty nurse attempted resuscitation on his wife before emergency services arrived minutes later, but despite all of their efforts explained that “Jen died right there on the pavement, on a warm pleasant evening. I remember a lot of diseased, rotten wood from the tree on the ground.”
Higgins was pronounced dead at the scene.
Noel Nugent, a senior tree surgeon who attended the scene on behalf of Manchester City Council told the inquest that there was evidence of decay in a “large area” of the tree, but that “this decay would not have been visible prior to the branch failure. It would have been enclosed and not visible to the naked eye.”
He added: “Decay would have started when it was cut back and can take years and years. This fungus is particularly aggressive. It eats into living tissue rather than just dead wood” and that “not everyone can recognise symptoms.”
The owner of the land on which the tree stood, Karim Manssour-Dahbi, told the court that a general survey on the property when he purchased it in 2020 had not raised any issues with the trees and that the seven trees that stood on the property seemed “healthy with strong green growth.”
When asked directly if the tree had appeared to be diseased he replied: “Absolutely not.”
Manssour-Dahbi began his evidence by expressing his condolences to Mr Higgins, and told the court that the tree concerned has now been cut down and only the trunk remains.
Gawen Higgins described his wife, who he married in 2010, and co-founded Carousel with in 2011, as a “beloved wife, daughter, sister, daughter-in-law and aunt.”
