Man Crushed to Death in Tractor Accident

An Oxnard man was crushed to death Monday while hanging from the front of a tractor that flipped as it negotiated a steep Santa Rosa Valley horse trail.

The man, known only as “Ladi” to work associates, died in the fifth Ventura County work-related accident since August.

Coroner’s officials said Monday that the victim’s identity would not be released until his family in Mexico was notified. An autopsy was scheduled for today, said Deputy Medical Examiner Armando Chavez.

The victim, who Chavez said was in his mid- to late 20s, had a wife and two daughters in Mexico.

Monday’s fatality followed a construction-site accident Thursday that claimed the life of 44-year-old Samuel Brewer, a mechanic in Westlake who died after an engine he was attempting to move fell from a crane suspension and landed on his head.

The two most recent accidents are being investigated by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

A Cal/OSHA investigator at the scene of Monday’s incident said 2000 has been a particularly dangerous year for construction crews across Ventura County.

“It’s been a bad year,” said Mack Matthews, a compliance engineer with Cal/OSHA. “It’s very atypical.”

Complete records for the year to date weren’t available late Monday, but Cal/OSHA officials said 13 people died on the job in Ventura County in 1999.

The incident Monday occurred as the man rode in the scooper mechanism of a single-passenger tractor. The operator of the tractor, Abelardo Menendez of Oxnard, suffered rib injuries in the accident but declined medical treatment.

Matthews said Cal/OSHA’s investigation of the incident will take at least four to six weeks. If it’s determined that state workplace-safety laws were broken, penalties to the person or company at fault could range from $500 to $25,000.

“It’s illegal to have more than one person on that tractor,” Matthews said. “Nobody with any experience would have had a person on the front.”

Fire and sheriff’s officials said Menendez and the other man were attempting to clear a horse trail on a steep grade when the tractor, for unknown reasons, stalled and flipped over.

The victim was using a small pesticide spray tank when he was hurled over the front of the tractor.

Menendez freed himself from the tractor in time, but the other man was pinned under one of the arms that extend out to hold the scooper mechanism on the machine, said Capt. Frank O’Hanlon of the Ventura County sheriff’s Moorpark station.

“He was driving down the hill in second gear when he lost control and it turned over,” O’Hanlon said.

The two men worked for Roberts Lawn Care Landscape Maintenance in Moorpark.

As coroner’s investigators worked at the scene, the tractor leaned precariously on its side along the steep trail, which is just east of Ripple Creek Lane inside the gated ranch community. Rows of shattered trail posts marked both sides of the path.

A Roberts Lawn Care official, who would not give his name, arrived at the scene a few hours after the accident and said the two men were clearing a bridle path of rocks and other debris when the accident occurred.