A HOUSEHOLDER battled in vain to save the life of a Forfar electrician who was electrocuted in a tragic accident, it emerged last night.

James Angus MacAulay, known as Gus or Angus, died carrying out a favour for an electrical contractor just over a week after celebrating his 63rd birthday.

A scream from Mr MacAulay alerted the householder to his plight.

The qualified electrician’s step-daughter Donna Sinclair (26) said he had been working on his own last week, fitting new sockets in the kitchen of a house at Noranside, near Forfar.

“What we’ve been told is he turned off the circuit breaker because he thought the electricity was off,” Mrs Sinclair explained.

“He thought the power was dead and picked up two wires, but they were live.”

Mr MacAulay was carrying out the electrical work in a cupboard at the time.

As the incident unfolded and on hearing his scream, the householder turned off the power, pulled at the cupboard doors to free Mr MacAulay and began to try to resuscitate him.

He also phoned for paramedics, but they were unable to revive the electrician.

Mrs Sinclair said, “My stepdad was not the sort of person who made mistakes. He was so careful.”

Mrs Sinclair added, “The man he was working for said it wasn’t a mistake and that it could have happened to anyone.”

Police who were called in by paramedics had the grim task of breaking the news to his family.

They were waiting when Mr MacAulay’s stepson Darren Hart (17), Mrs Sinclair’s brother, returned from school that day.

Mrs Sinclair, a senior staff nurse in Middlesbrough, said, “They came to the house with Darren and said his dad had been tragically killed that afternoon.”

The accident comes only four years after Mr MacAulay lost his second wife Kay to cancer. The couple had met a decade ago in Brechin.

In 2000 Kay, a senior staff nurse at the former Whitehills Hospital in Forfar, was diagnosed with lung cancer.

They married in April 2002, the year before she died.

Mr MacAulay, father of Fiona, Sheila, Gordon, Angus and Catriona from his first marriage, became a stepfather to Jamie, Richard, Donna and Darren with his second.

After Kay’s death, he brought up Darren as his own, living at Threewells Drive in Forfar.

Darren, who is 18 next month, went alone to Noranside to visit the house where the accident happened.

“It gave him some peace of mind,” said Mrs Sinclair. “He wanted to know where he died.”

Born on Islay, Mr MacAulay had lived in Glasgow before settling in Brechin and then Forfar.

One of his proudest moments was giving-away his stepdaughter at her wedding in Forfar last summer, an event he arranged almost single-handedly as Donna had moved to England.

Mr MacAulay developed an interest in model trains over the last three years and one of the floral tributes at his funeral on Thursday will be in the shape of a train.

His family have also asked that people attending the 1.30pm service at Parkgrove Crematorium, Friockheim, do not wear black.

Mrs Sinclair said, “When mum died, he did not wear black because he felt it was too morbid. We are going to go in bright colours.

“We are all devastated at what has happened, but comforted by the fact he is with mum.”

Police last night confirmed they attended at an address at Noranside following a report of a death there.

A spokeswoman said inquiries have now been completed into what she described as an accident and that a report had been submitted to the procurator fiscal in Forfar.