A 27-year-old laborer lost his life ended suddenly because his employer failed to have a competent person inspect the rail supporting a scaffold system nearly 80 feet off the ground for visible defects, an investigation by OSHA has found.
Salvatore Schirripa, a Bensonhurst, N.Y., construction company owner, has been indicted on manslaughter and other charges following the April 2015 death of Vidal Sanchez-Ramon, his employee at a Coney Island work site. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
Had his employer properly created a work zone, a passing car on Philadelphia's 63rd Street might not have struck and killed a 27-year-old plumber working to repair an underground leak on a mid-November night in 2015.
A 42-year-old laborer leak testing joints inside a 54-inch round pipe suffered fatal blunt force injuries in October 2015, when an inflatable “bladder” ruptured at a Springfield waste-water treatment plant. OSHA inspectors found that his employer, Henderson Construction of Central Illinois Inc., failed to train him properly on the testing procedure.
One worker died and two others were hospitalized in an incident last year because their employer failed to follow confined space safety procedures, according to OSHA.
On the same day the New York City Housing Authority announced that it would take steps to make elevators in NYCHA buildings safer, a mechanic was electrocuted while working at the agency’s Coney Island Houses in Brooklyn.
A man has been killed by a robot at a car parts factory in India.
The 24-year-old worker was reportedly adjusting a metal sheet being welded by the machine when he was stabbed by one of its arms.
HVAC installer Timothy O’Neal Gearing and a co-worker were trying to unjam a saw stuck in a metal roof when the saw jerked loose, causing Gearing to lose his balance and fall through an unguarded skylight. The 39-year-old plunged to the concrete ground 15 feet below died from his injuries after being transported to a hospital.
Twenty-one-year-old Jacob Casher was still a "new guy" employed by a Beaver-based plumbing company when he left home for work in September 2015. He probably never imagined that, as he worked to install a sewer line 11-feet underground in Butler, it was to be the last day of his life.
