Segway magnate dies at the handles of his own machine

The millionaire owner of the Segway upright scooter company has died after riding one of the machines off a cliff.

Jimi Heselden, 62, a former coal miner, plunged 10m into the River Wharfe close to his home in Boston Spa, North Yorkshire. Police said he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mr Heselden made a fortune developing a blast wall to protect troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He bought Segway last December.

The company was started by US inventor Dean Kamen in 1999. The machines, which the user moves by leaning forward, became popular around the world.

It is believed Mr Heselden was riding an all-terrain version yesterday when he lost control and careered into the fast-flowing river.

Mr Heselden, worth an estimated £166 million ($358m), was well known for his philanthropy in his native Leeds.

Last week he donated £10 million to a charity foundation he set up in 2008.

He began his working life in the Yorkshire coalfields, and lost his job in the wave of redundancies after the 1984 miners' strike.

Using his redundancy money he set up Hesco Bastion, making portable wire cages that could be filled with earth and sand.

They were initially used to shore up canal banks but the business took off when it received orders from the military, which used the cages as a form of sandbag to stop bullets, missiles and suicide bombers in combat zones.

In the late 1990s the Pentagon spent nearly $115 million on flatpack walls for use in Iraq and later in Afghanistan.

Mr Heselden, who married twice, had four grown-up children.

He said recently he was proud to give something back to his own community.

"There are a lot of families out there who are struggling and a lot of youngsters who have grown up without role models and who can't get jobs.

"Life turned out pretty well for me, but I still work in the same area where I grew up and every day I see people who, for whatever reason, are down on their luck."

In 2003, then-US President George W. Bush fell off a Segway at his family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Mr Bush took the embarrassing tumble off the machine as he tried to board it, but he managed to stay on his feet.

FATAL CREATIONS

MARIE CURIE

The Polish-born physicist's pioneering work led to the discovery of polonium and radium. Her research earned her the Nobel Prize first in 1903 and again eight years later but she died in 1934 from leukaemia caused by prolonged exposure to high-energy materials during her research.

JIM FIXX

In 1984 - seven years after publishing the best-selling get-fit-quick guide The Complete Book of Running - the formerly overweight journalist credited with starting the jogging craze was found dead by the side of the road near his home in New England after collapsing during a run. He was 52 and had a history of heart disease.

FRANZ REICHELT

The French tailor's determination to publicise his parachute prompted him to leap from the Eiffel Tower in 1912, ignoring friends' urging to use a dummy, Reichelt's canopy failed to deploy, and his fatal fall was captured by newspaper and newsreel cameramen.

OTTO LILIENTHAL

A 19th century German pioneer of human flight and inheritor of the dream of Icarus, Lilienthal's discoveries in the field of gliding paved the way for the success of the Wright brothers. In 1896, however, he plunged 18m to the earth during a test flight and broke his spine. He died the following day insisting his sacrifice had been worth it.

- INDEPENDENT