A veteran crime scene investigator is suing his police force for £100,000 after claiming that the stress of dealing with 50 murders a year led to him having a stroke.
Paul Tebbutt, 68, spent 27 years as a forensic investigator and became a crime scene co-ordinator in 2012.
He said he investigated 45 murders and 100 suspicious deaths each year.
In total, he helped to investigate more than 2,000 deaths since he joined the forensics team at West Midlands Police.
He is now suing the police force because he believes the stresses of the job caused him to have a stroke, forcing him to retire.
He worked on heinous murders, such as the brutal stabbing of a 15-year-old boy in Coventry.
He was also the forensics expert who attended the 1994 Coventry air disaster which saw five crew members lose their lives when a Boeing 737 came crashing down in Willenhall.
The job exposed him to ‘cumulative levels of harmful occupational stress’, his lawyers wrote in documents filed to London’s High Court.
Paul Tebbutt, 68, is suing West Midlands Police claiming that the stress of dealing with 50 murders a year led to him having a stroke
This stress, along with the harrowing nature of his work, led to him suffering a stroke in 2023, Mr Tebbutt claims.
In 2017, he said he dealt with up to 200 deaths and worked 45 hours a week.
In the following year he attended the highest number of murders in the West Midlands.
Mr Tebbutt, from Coventry, worked alone that year after his partner quit and was not replaced.
He previously said he had suffered ‘burnout’ after taking a photo of a teddy bear left in bed by a 12-year-old murder victim.
Court documents acknowledge that the nature of the work he did was inherently stressful but argue that West Midlands Police did not have a system to monitor how much pressure he was under, according to The Sun.
Mr Tebbutt said he was unable to go back to work in a police station because it filled him with dread and anxiety – so he worked from home.
After the stroke, he was classed as permanently disabled and medically retired in April 2024.
West Midlands Police said: ‘As this is an ongoing matter, it would be inappropriate to comment.’
