Man dies in fall from roof downtown
Police, state investigating why construction worker fell from 6-story building
The Baltimore Police Department and state workplace investigators are probing the death of a construction worker who fell off a building’s roof in downtown Baltimore on Thursday morning.
The man fell from the roof of 211 E. Pleasant St., a six-story storage building at Pleasant and Guilford streets, police spokesman Detective Jeremy Silbert said.
The victim’s age was not immediately available, and police are withholding his identity pending the notification of family, Silbert said. Police received a call about the incident at 6:55 a.m.
Theresa M. Blaner, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, said the death is under investigation by Maryland Occupational Safety and Health.
Silbert said he did not know what construction companywasworkingonthe roof when the employee fell off and died. Blaner declined to provide that information, citing the active MOSHinvestigation.
CubeSmart, a Malvern, Pa., self-storage company, operates in the building, although it’s unclear from online property records who owns the brick structure. CubeSmart did not respond to telephone calls seeking comment, and a woman who operates the Pleasant Street location said shewasnotpermittedtospeaktothenews media.
Across the state, at least four other people have died in workplace accidents since June.
On June 5, 20-year-old construction worker Kyle Hancock died when a trench collapsed around him while he was working in Baltimore’s Clifton Park neighborhood.
Michael David Zeller, 31, died June 8 after he fell down an elevator shaft at a building being remodeled for McCormick & Co.’s planned headquarters in Hunt Valley.
On June 9 in Annapolis, a worker was fatally injured when he was pinned by a branch from a tree he was trimming. And another man died June 13 after he was electrocuted while installing siding on a new house in Odenton.
The most recent government data reflect a rise in fatal workplace injuries in Maryland. In 2016, 92 people died of injuries while working in Maryland, a 33 percent jump from 2015, when 69 workrelated fatalities were reported, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics.