Amazon attack tragedy

‘20 mins.’ before aid

An Amazon worker who suffered a fatal heart attack last month remained on the floor of a warehouse for 20 minutes before anyone noticed, according to a report.

Billy Foister (inset), 48, who scanned and stocked shelves for the Internet giant, collapsed at its facility in Etna, Ohio, on Sept. 2 and died.

His brother Edward told the Guardian newspaper he was shocked it took so long for an Amazon floor monitor to spot him.

“How can you not see a 6-foot-3 man laying on the ground and not help him within 20 minutes?” the outraged brother asked.

“A couple of days before, he put the wrong product in the wrong bin and within two minutes management saw it on camera and came down to talk to him about it,” he said.

An employee who worked the same shift as Foister told the Guardian that after he died they were immediately “forced to go back to work.”

“No time to decompress,” the Amazon employee said. “Basically watch a man pass away and then get told to go back to work, everyone, and act like it’s fine.”

An Amazon spokeswoman said an in-house medical team responded “within three minutes to administer CPR and did all they could to support him until local EMS arrived, within 10 minutes, to transport him to the hospital.”

Grief counselors were made available, and some associates were given the option of taking the day off with pay, the spokeswoman said.

But Edward still blames the company for his brother’s death.

When he complained of chest pains at work, “He should have been sent to the hospital, not just sent back to work just to put things like toothpaste in a bin so somebody can get it in an hour.”

Six Amazon workers died on the job between November 2018 and April 2019, including Thomas Becker, who had a heart attack while working at the company’s warehouse in Joliet, Ill., in January, according to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.