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The workplace death of a 19-year-old who was crushed by a semi-truck at Pitman Family Farms could have been prevented if better safety protocols had been put in place, according to local police who responded to the scene and safety experts contacted by The Bee.
In late February, poultry plant worker Jose Abrego was killed when he was run over by a semi-truck at the Pitman plant in Sanger, the second death in a year at the plant and the fifth death in nine years at the company’s operations in California, including the Sanger poultry processing facility, a network of farms and an industrial feed mill. State workplace safety authorities Cal/OSHA are still investigating Abrego’s death.
The Bee obtained the Sanger Police Department incident report and police body camera video from the night of Abrego’s death through a California Public Records Act request. According to those records, Abrego was assigned to wash a semi-truck sometime before midnight on Tuesday, February 20. Shortly afterward, another worker moved the truck to another area so forklift operators could unload it, the written police report said. The driver didn’t see Abrego and ended up hitting him and killing him with the truck, the report said. According to the police report, Abrego’s clothing could have been hooked on the fender of a broken down truck, keeping him out of harm’s way. Police were called two minutes before midnight and Abrego was pronounced dead by paramedics at 12:07 a.m. on Feb. 21, the report said.
The Fresno Bee asked Richard Carr, an independent trucking dispute consultant with 40 years of experience in trucking, safety and risk management, to review the written police report and video footage and provide his opinion. Carr also worked for three years in the past as an accident investigator for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a government agency that investigates and regulates the safety of commercial trucking.
Carr said the police report and police body camera video indicate “process errors” in the company’s operations, such as allowing truck washing near a loading/unloading area. He also noted the “astonishingly dark” working conditions, the few employees wearing reflective clothing and the apparent confusion over who in the workplace was responsible for factory safety; issues that he said emerged clearly when he viewed video footage showing the scene and including police interviews with workers and other potential witnesses.
“That accident was completely preventable by simply changing some of the business practices and the procedures that are followed at that company in that processing plant,” Carr said.
Alice Berliner, a former workplace safety expert at the UC Merced Community & Labor Center, echoed Carr’s concerns in an April interview with The Bee (as of May, she heads the office of worker health and safety for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health). She did not view the video footage, but stressed in general that workplaces where cargo is loaded and unloaded should be operated with basic safety measures: workers should wear reflective clothing, the loading area should have bright lighting when it is dark, and there should be clear procedures for unloading and loading goods, including markings on the floor indicating safe areas to walk to avoid trucks and forklifts, she said.
“In terms of worker health and safety, there are very clear practices in workplaces where you have moving vehicles next to workers or heavy machinery next to workers,” she said.
The Sanger police officer who filled out the incident report and was on scene that evening noted that it made sense for the tragedy to occur as “there didn’t seem to be many safety measures in place or enforced to prevent these types of incidents.”
Labor leaders told The Bee that Abrego’s death likely would not have occurred had adequate safety protocols and union protections been in place at the non-union company.
The Bee sent an email with a list of questions to David Pitman, owner of Pitman Family Farms, asking for comment about Carr’s findings and the workplace death. Pitman declined to answer specific questions or comment on this report in a return email. In an earlier email statement to The Bee, Pitman said he is “committed to the health and well-being of his family, our work team and the families we serve.”
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Abrego’s death was the second death in less than a year at the family’s poultry processing business, a company known for its humanely raised poultry brand, Mary’s Chickens. Last May, 66-year-old Jesus Salazar drowned in a poultry waste pit at the facility.
At least four employees have died at Pitman Family Farms facilities in California since 2015. A fifth person was killed when a Pitman employee driving a tractor struck and killed an outside company truck driver who was on the grounds of a company facility. A Fresno Bee investigation from February details these fatalities and found the company had a higher-than-average rate of injuries compared to other local poultry processing plants, according to a Bee analysis of publicly available federal injury data.
A recent report from the AFL-CIO union found that Latino workers across all industries are at the highest risk of dying on the job in 2022 — a rate that has risen 24% over the past decade.
‘Amazingly dark’
Carr, the truck accident expert, described the outdoor area of the poultry plant where Abrego was assigned to wash the truck as “astonishingly dark.”
Sanger police reported that few employees were wearing reflective clothing and that the area was poorly lit “and required external lighting from emergency vehicles to properly assess the scene.”
Even if workers were to wear reflective clothing, Carr said it would be ineffective without more lighting.
Depending on the specific task, Cal/OSHA requires nighttime agricultural operations, such as poultry operations, to have a mix of high-visibility clothing, vehicle-mounted lights, portable lights and headlights. The agency also requires safety meetings at the start of each shift.
One key question for Carr: Why was Abrego assigned to wash the truck in an area where another employee was assigned to move the vehicle?
There should be separate areas for maintenance work, washing and loading/unloading of trucks, he said. “You don’t merge those areas.”
Carr also said that “the company’s response just didn’t seem right.”
Carr said the video showed someone in plain clothes asking to see the body. Otherwise, Carr said, it appeared there was no safety or plant manager to take responsibility. The Pitman director in the video identified himself to police as David Rubenstein, vice president of operations.
Police noted in the incident report that a “manager” also arrived on scene after being notified of the incident. But most of the questions were answered by a third person, an area supervisor who told police on the video that he supervises 140 employees, including workers who may have witnessed the fatal accident or who were in the area, according to CCTV footage. the police.
“If you’re a supervisor, if you’re a plant manager, if you’re an operations director or whatever, they’re all your people and they’re all your responsibility and someone just died,” Carr said. his opinion after watching and analyzing the video, “and they don’t seem too concerned about it.”
