UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Abstract: At approximately 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday, October 13, 2020, an employee was working in a truck repair shop. He was in an outside yard area, repairing a customer's Teledyne Princeton PiggyBack forklift. For part of the procedure, he was operati ng a Toyota forklift. He positioned the Toyota to face the Teledyne. He removed the carriage of the Teledyne by using a steel cable apparatus tied to the forks of the Toyota. The cable had too much tension, so the employee dismounted from t he seat of the Toyota, climbed up, and stood in between the Toyota's mast uprigh t and overhead guard to get access to the latch on the cable. As he released the tension on the cable, his foot slipped. It landed on the middle lever of the To yota's controls and depressed it. This action caused the mast upright to retract . The employee grabbed the moving chain inside the lift cylinder of the Toyota. He suffered an amputation to the index and middle fingers on his right hand. As the mast upright began to retract, it squeezed and crushed the employee's chest against the overhead guard. The employee screamed. Two coworkers and an individu al from a nearby business across the street heard the scream and responded. They saw the employee's body crushed between the mast upright and the overhead guard of the Toyota. The first coworker immediately turned off the Toyota forklift. A ll three individuals attempted to pull the employee out from in between the mast and the overhead guard, but they could not. His body was still compressed betwe en the upright and guard. The first coworker turned the Toyota forklift back on to release the employee's body. The first coworker used the Toyota's middle leve r to push the mast upright forward and release the employee's body. The employee had suffered the amputation of the index and middle fingers on his right hand, as well as a crushing injury to his upper chest. He was killed. DOSH learned of this event at 4:40 p.m. on that same day, from the local police department.