Mulcher kills sleeping man

[Scooby074]

A horrible situation where a mulcher ran over a sleeping vagrant man while cleaning up an urban trouble spot thats been home to a murder and roberies in the past.

Hopefully it was nobody who is a regular here. I dont know how anyone could sleep in close proximity to a mulcher, theyre pretty noisy. Clearly just an awful industrial accident.

Mulching machine runs over man while he slept | KOB.com

 

[CompactTractorFan]

Awful...

 

[Transit]

Easy not to know anyone is working with a mulcher, the guy was most likely in a deep drunken stupor, we see them passed out on the street all the time.

 

[Ductape]

I'm with transit........... pretty fair odds he was under the weather. Not the mulcher operator...... the bum.

 

[teg]

Just wonder if they know the guy "sleeping" by the log was alive or already dead?

 

[Taylortractornut]

I worked with 2 guys on a job one time that had similar misfortunes like this. One grew up as a farmer and was combining wheat. A hitch hiker had passed out in the thick wheat from drugs he was on. My friend didnt know he was there till he saw him go into the header table. The teeth on the reel stabbed him and the sickle mower and auger mangled him. The other guy was a utilities ROW mower with about 8 big armored tractors. He and his son and brother were all mowing a large swath under a power line. And the tractors being caged in like are they cant see everything. He was running a Brown MFG rotary mower and straddled some smaller trees and saw some clothes fly out the back. Turns out this man had been missing for a few days and had died the day before. THis guy never got on a mower again he let his broather and son run the tractors for several years after that.

 

[Jaylegger]

That is just awful. I have to ask though. Wouldn't the "safe job procedure" for operating a mulcher such as this be to first walk the area being mulched to ensure it's clear of hazards and or people.

 

[Scooby074]

personally, i think he was passed out drunk in the deep grass/underbrush or dead.

No way a normal person could not hear that machine coming. I suppose he could have been deaf, but still, youd see it, or feel the vibrations. Not like it could sneak up on you.

I would also assume that the operator did a relatively thorough check considering the area was a hangout for bums (likely the main reason to remove the undergrowth), but you cant check everywhere. Dark clothes laying behind a fallen tree would be hard to see at the best of times.

I gather he's been on the job there for a couple of days. Heres a background piece on the cleanup. Dated a couple of days before the accident.

http://www.daily-times.com/ci_17494691

 

[boggen]

i hate to say it, but when mowing tall grass / weeds 1 foot or higher. it can be darn down right impossible to see things in the grass / weeds. i remember a few stories over the years, of mowing pastures, and end up mowing over a baby cow. or some other animal. heck even with a bucket right near ground level as a rotory mower on back. you still can't see or keep tree limbs from finding there way back and into the mower until it is to late, and it almost stops the tracker dead in its tracks.

you can only do so much even if you walk the area first to check for things.

as far as sound goes and being woken up by noise. drunk or drugged up. it doesn't have to be that. there are folks that are very heavy sleepers. like me. i could have sirens from ambulance, fire trucks, police, helicopter landing near by and still not wake my rear up. and this has happened. folks living in town near a busy highway more likely get use to noise vs folks living in a quite area.

it was an accident not much can be done about it. i would say.

 

[Gio]

One **** of a wake up call.

 

[slowzuki]

I've mowed some fawns before with my disc mower. I watch every square foot of grass going into the mower but you just don't see everything.

 

[leveled]

any chance this guy could have been dead in that field? Pretty hard to do an autopsy now.

 

[Jaylegger]

Here's a photo of the area and the mulcher involved.

 

[dmccarty]

he Farmington Daily Times says machine operator Chasen Kelley told detectives he stopped the wood mulching machine when he saw clothing and other debris flying out of the machine.

:shocked:

In heavy thick brush/grass you ain't gonna see squat. I almost ran over a fawn when I worked on a fawn. Did not see it until the fawn jumped up and ran. It was lucky that it hit my front tire, bounced off and ran away. On that farm I used to stand up when I mowed to try to see the $%^&*( gopher dug tractor traps. No ROPS or seat belts back then. Very seldom could I see and react in time to the Gopher dug tractor traps but at least I was standing and could more easily bounce along.

Later,
Dan

 

[Mace Canute]

The Farmington Daily Times says machine operator Chasen Kelley told detectives he stopped the wood mulching machine when he saw clothing and other debris flying out of the machine.

Major ewww factor there. Accidents like that happen every now and then. It is very traumatic to the operators...if it isn't, I would suspect there's something a tad off with their psyche. A few years back a Line crew was putting in a temporary take-off pole to feed an underground primary power line. It was rocky going and they had backhoed out the trench and were digging a hole in the trench for the pole with a radial arm digger. The operator got off the machine and went around the other side for some reason and when he came back, he got back up to the controls and started to dig again...until clothes and stuff started to come up with the auger. Turns out a young labourer had jumped down into the hole to try to dig out a rock by hand, after he had been given specific instructions to not jump into the trench and hole. The operator couldn't see him and set the auger down on top of him. They figured the kid was just trying hard to show he was a good worker and that he must have been bent over trying to get a grip on the rock. He was 18 and it was his first week on the job. The whole crew had to have counseling and the operator couldn't bring himself to run the digger after. It really f**ked him up.

 

[JB4310]

any chance this guy could have been dead in that field?

Exactly what I was thinking, and what the operator should tell himself if he starts feeling guilty.

JB.

 

[dmccarty]

Not quite as gruesome as the mulcher hitting the sleeping/dead man....

After Hurricane Fran hit our area the number of trees that were blown down was unreal. We still have trees rotting in the woods from that storm. There was a crew cleaning up downed trees. They were cutting the trees from the stumps so at least the logs could be hauled off. One of the workers had to, as my kids would say, "Take A Poo", and squatted down in the hole left from a big tree that had fallen.

The bulldozer hit the stump/root ball which promptly fell back into its hole. The operator did not know the guy was in the hole doing his business.

They noticed the guy was missing but it took awhile for them to figure out he had been in the hole.... He was dead by the time they found him.

Later,
Dan

 

[wvpolekat]

any chance this guy could have been dead in that field? Pretty hard to do an autopsy now.

My money is on this as well. Between the noise and vibration you would have to be in a coma to not wake up.

 

[Ford tractor]

I thought this was an old article from Seattle. Seem to recall the same thing happening to a highway crew cutting the right of way along Hwy 5 a few years back. Guy ran over a sleeper in the black berries. Bums / druggies / homeless sleep in the berry patches to keep from getting killed by the gangs and hassled by the police. I sure wouldn't want to live with that on my conscience - even knowing it was near impossible to avoid it would still tear a guy up inside.

 

[jamesn]

in larado tx, doing seismac mulching, we run into dead bodies all the time, illegals comming from mexico, getting bitten by snakes, or dehydration. it is hard to see somebody laying down