Second industrial death in Hamilton in less than a week being probed
The Ministry of Labour and police are investigating the death of a worker at a Sherman Avenue manufacturer, the second industrial fatality in less than a week in Hamilton.
“No one is quite sure what happened there,” Hamilton Police Acting staff Sgt. John Pauls said Tuesday night. “We’re still looking at it. We don’t have the answer.”
EMS and the Hamilton Fire Department were called at 2:20 p.m. Tuesday to North American Tillage Tools Company at 460 Sherman Ave. N.
Sylvia Boyce, a health and safety co-ordinator with the United Steelworkers, said the union member apparently “was found on the floor near the conveyor where he was working. We don’t know what happened.
“They’re not sure if this was work related or natural causes,” she said.
The company, also known as Ingersoll Tillage Group Inc., produces planting equipment for agricultural use in a “state-of-the-art (factory)” that “uses robotics and unique heat treatment processes to develop disc blades, coulters, openers and assemblies for the majority of North American OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers),” according to the firm’s website.
A spokesperson for the company would not comment on the death. The Ministry of Labour could not be reached.
Tuesday’s incident comes less than a week after 25-year-old, father-of-one Kalvin Richards died, apparently from asphyxiation, while cleaning out a tanker truck at Toronto Tank Lines on Eastport Drive. His funeral is scheduled for Saturday.
Richards and a second worker had passed out inside a tanker truck last Thursday. Hamilton Fire Department rescuers and paramedics were able to revive the second worker but Richards later died in hospital.
Richards leaves behind his common law wife, Macey Cherrington and their five-month-old daughter, Ruby.
“This should not be happening “Something has to be done,” Cherrington said. “I have no answers at all about what happened.”
She said Richards, an employee at Toronto Tank Lines for six years, had told her numerous times about concerns he had about safety at his job and was trying to find other work.
“My dad works at Stelco and was trying to get him in,” she said. “Kalvin was in the hiring pool.”
She described Richards as “kind and selfless. He was the most amazing father. He was just so excited to watch his daughter grow up.
“Everybody who met him just loved him, whether they met him once or they knew him forever.”
She said he grew up in Toronto but moved to Hamilton ten years ago. He graduated from Sir Winston Churchill High School. He liked cliff diving, basketball and collecting Pop Characters.
Boyce noted that it still has to be determined what happened in both fatalities. “But in my view ... there is a huge problem in regards to training and the quality of the training. Often employers cut corners and the workers don’t get the proper training they need to do the job safely and properly.”
Workplace safety legislation, she said, allows workers to refuse unsafe work but sometimes they are reluctant to use that power because “they have to earn a living and put a roof over their heads.”
She argued investigations should always consider looking into the possibility of whether the case warrants criminal charges for criminal negligence.
That’s what happened with a Toronto supervisor who was sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison in connection with the failure of scaffolding that led to the deaths of four men. Lawyers for Vadim Kazenelson lost a bid this week to appeal the finding that he had not taken reasonable steps to prevent the 2009 tragedy.
Richards’ funeral will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday at Bay Gardens Funeral Home, 947 Rymal Road. A GoFundMe web page has been set up for the family at www.gofundme.com/macey-ruby-richards