FOR five agonising days Rosemarie Carroll stayed by her son's bedside although she knew he was already clinically dead.

He was being kept alive on a life support machine in Burnley General Hospital because his family had taken the decision to donate his organs but heart specialists at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, were not in a position to perform the transplant for five days.

Duncan, 19, received serious head injuries in an horrific road accident.

The whole family, parents Roland and Rosemarie, brother Derek and sister Susan carried donor cards and they agreed Duncan's organs should be offered for transplant to help someone else have a chance to live.

At the time Mr Carroll said: "There is still part of him alive so he is not totally dead."

"When we realised Duncan was severely brain damaged we had to make a decision. We think Duncan would have approved. Three people can be helped and his short life will not have been wasted."

Doctors from Papworth flew up to Samlesbury to collect his heart which was transplanted into 42-year-old Anthony John Hayes, from Coventry.

His kidneys went to Manchester where one was given to Bob, then 36, and the other went to a 26-year-old man who sadly later died of cancer.

Duncan, 19, was a former pupil of Towneley High School, Burnley, and worked for Dorma. He was a roadie with the local punk band Notsensibles.

He died after the Triumph Toledo he was a front seat passenger in crashed in Briercliffe Road, Burnley.