Three New York City construction workers died last week at three different worksites – two as the result of struck-by incidents.
In Brooklyn, news sources report that 34 year-old Gregory Echevarria was killed when part of a crane he was helping to assemble fell on him. The incident occurred at 3:15 a.m. on Saturday at the entrance to the Holland tunnel, when a 7.5 ton counterweight fell on Echevarria. Another worker was injured and was transported to the hospital, as were two workers who observed the incident.
Echevarria’s brother Keith was working at the site when the fatality occurred but did not see it happen. Echevarria, an Army veteran who served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, left behind a fiancé and a five-month-old baby.
Also a Brooklyn, a 23-year-old construction worker who’d been on the job for only a week fell to his death Wednesday from the roof of a 13-story building. His identity was not immediately released.
And on Monday, a construction worker died after being struck in the head by a stone that was knocked loose by equipment. Fifty-one-year-old Nelson Salinas was reportedly part of a crew performing façade repairs when a device used to secure scaffolding to the façade knocked loose a coping stone.
Salinas was transported to a nearby hospital, where he died.
Authorities said the scaffolding device may have malfunctioned.