Abstract: At approximately 4:30 a.m. on October 3, 2002, an employee was cutting a piece of sheet metal using a computer numerical control laser machine equipped with a shuttle table. A piece of scrap metal generated from a cut did not fall into the recovery tray beneath the machine. The employee watched the computer operated machine until it moved to the other end of a cut, thinking this would give him enough room to lean into the machine and remove the scrap. Unfortunately, as he reached over the table, the cutting machine returned and trapped him between the laser gantry and a Plexiglas window on the end of the machine. He sustained a crushing injury to his throat. When paramedics arrived, he had been extricated from the machine and was unconscious. He later started to breathe and was transported to a hospital and put on a ventilator.