A 72-year-old man from Edmundston has died following a workplace incident involving a stone crusher, WorkSafeNB confirmed this week.
RCMP Sgt. Jocelyn Picard of the Saint-Léonard detachment said officers responded to a rural area outside Edmundston on Monday afternoon following a call reporting the incident, CBC News reported.
Picard said the man had been working on a stone crusher at a construction business when the machine got jammed and he went underneath to try and fix it, according to the report.
A piece of machinery subsequently fell on the worker, killing him, according to Picard's account as relayed by CBC News.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene, and no further details regarding the specific construction business or equipment model have been publicly released at this time.
The Investigation
RCMP determined that no criminality was involved in the man's death, and the file was subsequently transferred to WorkSafeNB for a full workplace safety investigation, CBC News reported. This handover is standard procedure in New Brunswick when a fatality occurs on a worksite and initial police assessment rules out criminal wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, WorkSafeNB said via social media on Tuesday morning that a female worker had died in a "workplace incident" in Saint-Jacques, a community near Edmundston, though the agency did not provide additional specifics regarding the cause or circumstances beyond that acknowledgment.
“Our thoughts are with her family, friends, and colleagues,” said the agency. “We invite you to pay tribute to this individual and the many others who have lost their lives due to a workplace incident or occupational illness.”
