Worker Killed at Construction Site

A construction worker was crushed to death Friday by a 3-ton sewer pipe, the second fatal accident in about two months at a housing development being built in Stevenson Ranch.

Javier Ochoa, 35, of Newhall was leveling dirt in a ditch on Pico Canyon Road west of Stevenson Ranch Parkway about 3 p.m. when the pipe, which had been hoisted into the air, slipped from its harness and tumbled into the ditch, said Lt. Larry Gump of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Santa Clarita station.

Paramedics found Ochoa in full cardiac arrest and took him to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, authorities said.

The incident is under investigation by county sheriff’s deputies and Cal/OSHA.

On July 20, another worker was killed at the site when he was run over by a grading machine. The property is being developed by Irvine-based John Laing Homes, but that victim worked for construction subcontractor Dennis McCoy & Sons Inc. of Westlake Village.

Ochoa was killed on a pipe-laying project run by another subcontractor, Ventura-based SME Construction Inc., said David McKinzie, president of John Laing Home’s Los Angeles/Ventura County division. He could not confirm whether Ochoa was employed by SME Construction, and the pipe-laying firm could not be reached for comment Saturday.

“This is an isolated incident,” McKinzie said. “It’s a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the family. It’s important to us to have a safe job site and we think that we do.”

The 279-home development, known as Southern Oaks, is scheduled to be completed by 2001. Some of its homes will be among the largest in Stevenson Ranch, with six bedrooms and 4,000 square feet of living space.

State investigators will consider each death separately, even though they occurred at the same site, Cal/OSHA spokesman Dean Fryer said.

“We’re looking at different contractors here who are operating independently of each other on the same project,” Fryer said. “We would look at them as separate employers, basically. Obviously, we’d want to see if there’s a repetitive pattern of accidents.”

Construction-related deaths topped the list of workplace fatalities in California last year, according to a report released last month by the state Department of Industrial Relations. The report said 15.7% of the state’s 591 workplace deaths happened in the construction industry.

McKinzie said state officials cleared his company of wrongdoing in the July death.