CARING mum Lesley McInally died after falling down stairs because of a badly-fitted carpet.

The 29-year-old lay unconscious in her home in Bury Street, Radcliffe, as her seven-year-old daughter, Holly, dialled 999, an inquest was told.

The youngster waited beside her dying mother and also tried to get in contact with friends and family.

Miss McInally was taken to Fairfield General Hospital bleeding heavily from a severe head injury on the morning of October 22 and transferred to Hope Hospital's intensive care unit.

She failed to regain consciousness and her family were by her bedside when the decision was made to switch off the life support machine six days later. Her organs were donated for transplant.

The inquest in Bury on Monday heard how Miss McInally suffered fatal injuries after losing her footing on the badly-fitted stair carpet at her home in Bury Street. Her father, Hugh, was hospitalised earlier this year when he also fell on the stairs.

Miss McInally was aware of the dangerous state of the stairs and on the night before her death, she had told her friend, Zoe Rawlinson, that she was going to get a replacement carpet fitted in the next few days.

Bury coroner's officer, Mr Geoff Cave, who investigated the cause of Miss McInally's death, told the hearing that the carpet fitting was the worst he had come across in his 30-year career.

Miss McInally went to schools in Northern Ireland and moved to the Manchester area four years when she got a job working with people with learning difficulties at Langdon College in Manchester. She bought her house in Bury Street in January.

Her father said: "The stair carpet had never been fitted properly and all her family and friends knew how unsafe it was. Lesley said she was always going to do something about, but never did."

Coroner Mr Simon Nelson paid tribute to Miss McInally. He said: "One cannot be but moved having regard to the personality and demeanour of Lesley who was still very young, and had not reached the prime of her life.

" She had so much to offer, so much to give; her very caring qualities made her most suitable for the position which she held at the college.

"Lesley was a caring mother and a loyal friend. You cannot imagine how it must have been for Holly, finding her mother in an unconscious state from which she never recovered. Those who best know Lesley will tell Holly in years to come what a fine person her mother was."

He added: "This was an accident waiting to happen. The stairs were a death trap. It so very nearly had fatal consequences for Lesley's father. Lesley knew of the problem and it really beggars belief as to how it had been left in this situation.

"Yet, it is so very easy to say whatever it is, whatever needs doing, to leave it, to say 'I'll sort it out'. Indeed, this was something that Lesley intended to deal with in the next hours or days. In the end it caused her own tragic demise."

The coroner recorded a verdict of death following a fall in the home.