We don’t know who performed the task of informing his young family, but it must have been a very difficult duty to carry out. There are no words with which you can break gently the news of the sudden loss of a father and husband.
But that is what someone had to do after a construction accident at a Bronx worksite yesterday morning. A worker there was crushed to death, leaving behind his wife and the couple’s four children, ages two to 16.
The 38-year-old was helping move an enormous industrial air conditioning unit at the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital when it slid off of a flatbed trailer and pinned him beneath.
Workers were using a crane to lift the cooling unit with the flatbed trailer just before 11 a.m., but apparently the air conditioner had not been secured to the trailer before the maneuver began.
The plan was to use the crane to move the AC unit and trailer to a truck, which would then transport the pair.
But the giant unit slid off of the flatbed onto the father and husband who was giving directions to the crane operator.
One witness described hearing a loud snap of wires “and then the earth just shook, like an earthquake,” he said.
Last night, relatives of the Jersey City man gathered to pray for their loved one. His mother, 61, said simply that he was “a very, very good son” with whom she had been very close.
His sister described the loss of a man who “would do everything he could to be a good provider for his family” as a “nightmare.”
In the days and months and years to come, the family will be forced to grapple with not only their loss and grieving, but also the economic realities of the loss of a provider.
Source: nydailynews.com, “Industrial size air conditioner plunges from crane, killing 38-year-old man,” Dec. 4, 2012
- Our New York City law firm represents clients injured in construction accidents.