A HEREFORDSHIRE man has denied killing his brother-in-law by striking him on the head with the metal bucket of a mechanical digger.

Philip Parry, aged 51, was appearing at Birmingham Crown Court this week where he pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of Adrian Andrews.

Benjamin Aina, prosecuting, told the court that Parry, who is from Preston-on-Wye, was employing Mr Andrews as a sub-contractor on a job to connect a property to a septic tank on the Whitfield estate on the road between Hereford and Abergavenny.

He said the prosecution case is that in October 2012 the defendant was at the controls of a digger when the bucket struck Mr Andrews on the head fracturing his skill and causing him to fall into a four-metre deep trench.

Mr Aina told the court that when paramedics arrived to the site near Wormbridge they found the lifeless body in a trench and that a pathologist had found the skull injuries to be consistent with having been hit by the digger bucket.

Mr Aina said that initially the defendant had claimed to have found Mr Andrews, who was a former Hereford County Hospital DJ and from Grosmont, in the trench when he returned from going to the toilet.

However, when he was interviewed again several months later, the story had changed with the defendant then saying he had been talking to Mr Andrews who was in the trench when the walls collapsed. He had then used the digger and a fork to uncover him.

But the prosecution say that witnesses will say there was no significant sign of a collapse of the trench or of Mr Andrews being covered in soil.

The jury watched a DVD taken by police at the scene just a few hours after the emergency services were called.

The case is expected to last between two and three weeks.