Abstract: A plumber on a municipal maintenance crew that had been sent to mend a broken water line. After he uncovered a section of the water line, he tried to pull out the copper tubing that ran to the water-meter box. He was unable to extract the old line, so he connected the tubing to a new piece of tubing with a coupling. Using a backhoe, he pulled the copper tubing up through the water-meter box. However, after 900 millimeters of the approximately 3-meter-long tubing had passed through the box, the coupling snagged an underground electric cable. The coupling severed the cable, which supplied a 120-volt streetlight. The employee was holding the copper tubing and received an electric shock. He was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. He had been electrocuted.