MANAGERS of a North Yorkshire fireworks company were responsible for the death of Knaresborough display organiser Michael Mason - and risked the safety of their own employees, a court heard.

Mr Mason, 53, of Hawthorne Avenue, Knaresborough, who was well known locally, was burning firework parts in an incinerator when the door blew off and killed him in November 1998.

Leeds Crown Court was told that senior management at J and M Enterprises' failed to ensure staff were trained in the handling and disposal of fireworks

As a result, company employee Michael Blacker had unknowingly exposed himself to a possible explosion by breaking up turbo rockets, said Robert Smith QC, prosecuting.

Then untrained site manager Heidi Turton had wrongly handed them over to Mr Mason, 52, who took them to his business base and then died trying to destroy them.

Junior prosecution counsel Simon Jackson described how the management and the company also imported fireworks without permission, including some capable of making a blast-like explosion, and breached prohibition orders forbidding their movement.

Joint managing director John Mather was arrested for mistakenly trying to take a live firework on to an aeroplane at Newcastle Airport on January 20, 1999.

The prosecution accepted it was a genuine error. Operations manager Peter James Denton had taken it from a box containing dummy rockets and given it to him to show to potential Polish purchasers.

Joint managing director Nigel Ronald Jackson, of Spencers Hotel, Harrogate, Mather, of St Paul's Drive, Mount Pleasant, Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, Denton, of Addey Crescent, South Elmsall, Pontefract, and J and M Enterprises of Wetherby Ltd, of Melmerby, Ripon, pleaded guilty to offences under explosives and Health and Safety legislation.

Some of the charges related to the HSE's investigation of the death of Mr Mason, 52, of Hawthorn Avenue, Knaresborough, who died on November 8, 1998.

Mr Jackson described how over four years, the senior officers and the company broke the law by not getting official approval for some fireworks they imported.

Judge Norman Jones QC will sentence the defendants on Monday after hearing defence barristers.

Updated: 10:52 Saturday, September 15, 2001