ACCIDENT VICTIM WAS FORKLIFT INSTRUCTOR

THE INCIDENT


Dover- If there was a problem with a forklift, Wayne Causey was always the one who knew how to fix it. Causey, who died Saturday night in an industrial accident, was the forklift expert for Heidelberg Web Press, in charge of repairing the vehicles and also training employees. And he was in the process of working on one of those vehicles when something went wrong and the forklift carriage dropped pinning him to the ground and eventually asphyxiating him. " His job was fork truck mechanic," said Galen Hoffman, director of human resources at Heidleberg Web Press. "Wayne put together our forklift training program. He was a training instructor. He was Mr. Forklift." That’s what makes Causey’s death even more puzzling. If anyone at the company knew how to work a forklift, it was him. The thing that’s so devastating for the employees is he was the guy that knew this equipment," Hoffman said.

The company still isn’t certain what may have caused the forklift carriage to fall on Causey. The reason Causey was at the printing press company at such a late hour, Hoffman said was that he was doing some repair work on one of the forklifts. Because of the company’s ongoing renovations, power was out during the day, and Causey came in at night instead, which he had the authority to do. He had set aside a four to five hour block of time, because the repair work was expected to take some time. When he became pinned under the forklift carriage, a security guard heard his cries for help and called police to the scene. Emergency personnel were at the Broadway printing press company within minutes, but it was to late. Though the cause of Saturday’s accident has not yet been determined, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is looking into the matter. OSHA was in Dover on Sunday investigating and will issue a report on the death within six months.