A CEILING that collapsed on elderly people in a care home, killing a woman and hurting several others, could have fallen at any moment, an inquest heard yesterday.

Mary Elizabeth Potter, 89, was sitting in the lounge of Maghull Group’s St Michael’s Manor care home, in Woolton Road, in Allerton, when a 10ft square section of ceiling crashed down on her and five other pensioners.

Staff performed cardiac massage and mouth-to-mouth among the falling debris and pulled her to safety in “chaotic scenes”, the inquest jury was told.

She was taken to the Royal Liverpool Hospital at about 9.30am on November 28 last year.

But she was not given a brain scan.

And in the early hours of the following morning, the stunned pensioner was sent back to the care home with some over-the-counter painkillers.

Her doctors, Dr Ulf Demnitz and Dr Sajid Mahmood, believed at the time that she had escaped from the “catastrophic ceiling collapse” almost unscathed.

Only a tiny cut on the back of her head told of the internal injuries she suffered. Care home staff sent her straight back by ambulance. This was her third return trip of the day, as Mrs Potter had a chest scan in hospital earlier in the day of the ceiling collapse. But, about two days later, after doctors became concerned at her apparently slow recovery, Mrs Potter was finally given a brain scan.

It revealed she had severe head injuries and a bleed on the brain.

Senior consultant Dr Geoffrey Phillips oversaw an inquiry into Mrs Potter’s treatment.

Yesterday he said: “It didn’t look good that she was sent back home and later died as a result of head injuries.

“But the decision not to carry out a CT scan was correct. There was nothing in the clinical evidence to suggest she had serious head injuries. And would it have made any difference? The answer is no.”