Construction worker dies after fall from 53rd floor of LA skyscraper on to car
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Version 1 of 2. A construction worker at a high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles fell 53 stories to his death and landed on the back end of a moving car. A woman who was driving the car was evaluated by paramedics at the scene and taken to hospital, according to an emergency responder who did not wish to be named. He said she was “fine but in shock”. The accident on Thursday happened at the construction site of the Wilshire Grand tower, which, when completed, will be Los Angeles’s tallest building at just under 1,100 feet. The emergency responder said that he arrived to find “a very gruesome scene”, with the man’s body lying on the left-hand side of the car. “You can imagine the scene,” he continued. “Like a water balloon. Remains everywhere ... it’s been a bad day for everybody.” The construction worker, who has not been officially named but was described in an impromptu news conference by officials as an electrician who had worked on the site for just two days, fell from the 53rd floor of the tower, above the floors where windows have already been installed. The windowless floors are rimmed by waist-high barricades. He did not appear to have been wearing any sort of helmet or safety harness, according to the Los Angeles Times. A staff photographer for the Times, Mel Melcon, was on assignment nearby when the man fell. He said he heard a thump which “sounded like a bag of cement fell off the building”. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles police department said that at about 12pm PST officers received a radio call that a construction worker had fallen from the building. The LA county coroner’s office and the district attorney’s office are both investigating the incident, but the spokesperson said that “at this time it appears to have been a tragic workplace accident”. A statement from Turner Construction Company, which is working on the Wilshire Grand project: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the worker’s family … The entire team working on this project is committed to the safety of all of our workers, and we will do everything we can to understand what happened here today and prevent it from happening again.” The site will also be shut down for two days for an investigation by the occupational safety and health administration. |