A construction worker operating a large cherry picker was crushed to death when he came in contact with a concrete slab in an industrial accident at Moscone Center in San Francisco early Friday, police said.
The man, who was not identified, was in the bucket of the large boom and attempting to load it onto the back of a flatbed truck when he was killed, said Officer Albie Esparza, a San Francisco Police Department spokesman.
The incident happened in a below-ground area of the Moscone South building on Third Street between Howard and Folsom streets, Esparza said. The man was declared dead at the scene. Most workers at the site were sent home for the rest of the day.
Jason Barnett, a spokesman for the Moscone expansion project and for Webcor Builders, the construction company working at the site, said the man was crushed.
“We are saddened to report that a fatal accident occurred this morning at the Moscone Convention Center Expansion project,” Barnett said in a statement. “An employee of a heavy equipment rental company was
fatally injured at approximately 6:45 a.m. this morning. The employee had come to pick up an aerial work platform also commonly known as a high reach boom at Moscone Center and take it back to the rental company. During the process of removing the machine, the man was crushed between the heavy device and a concrete structure.”
