Friends, family mourn man killed on job site

Amir Kaman, crushed by a panel, recalled as kind and wise.

Amid the grief of losing his cousin, it’s particularly shocking to Masood Rasoulian that Amir Kaman would die while doing his job on a Southeast Austin construction site.

“He was the most careful person,” Rasoulian said. “He did not do anything wrong. He was just doing his job.”

Kaman, 49, was killed Wednesday when he was crushed by a 20-ton concrete panel where an apartment complex was being built at the intersection of Wickersham Lane and Cromwell Circle. He left behind a wife, a daughter, a tightly knit extended family and many friends. So many came to his funeral on Sunday that mourners stood in the back of the chapel, spilling into the foyer.

Kaman is originally from Iran, Rasoulian said, but lived and worked in Austin for more than a decade. Several of Kaman’s relatives and friends shared their memories with the gathered mourners in Farsi, some breaking into tears as photos of Kaman with his family rolled through a slide show.

His wife, Lourdes, who is Mexican, spoke in Spanish about the difficulty of losing her husband and her desire to be strong and move forward, as their 8-yearold daughter, Sophia, clung to her waist at the podium.

“My dad was a really good person,” Sophia told the packed room. “He loved everyone . ... I wish I could say goodbye to him.”

In the midst of the tragedy, the Kaman family reached out to the nonprofit Workers Defense Project, which offers safety training to construction workers and companies. Texas loses an average of 2.5 people every three days to construction site deaths, said the group’s executive director, Jose Garza. More than 60 percent of people in the construction industry have never received basic safety training, he said.

“We got involved because Amir’s story, unfortunately, is not uncommon,” Garza said. “There are far too many families that have to deal with situations like this . ... We have been working with the family to make sure they fully understand their legal rights and that they have access to an attorney so they can swiftly