Topshop and ex owner Arcadia fined £1m after kid, 10, was killed by barrier

TOPSHOP and former owner Arcadia were yesterday fined £1million over a ten-year-old killed by a barrier.

The businesses, part of Sir Philip Green’s former retail empire and both now in liquidation, were convicted of health and safety failures.

They failed to install and inspect properly a 17-stone barrier that toppled on to Kaden Reddick at Topshop in Reading, Berks, in 2017.

It happened days after a similar barrier fell on a ten-year-old girl in Glasgow.

In a statement, Kaden’s mum Lisa Mallett told Reading crown court: “There is a hole — a hole that is bottomless so can’t be filled.”

The fine was awarded after a court found the firm guilty at a hearing earlier this year.

"Sentencing, Judge Heather Norton said: For a child to die on an ordinary day in an ordinary shop must carry a particular pain and shock.

"The risk these queue barriers possessed should have been and was, forseen by the defendant companies."