Farm Labor Contractor Killed in Forklift Accident

A 79-year-old farm labor contractor was killed Wednesday when he was run over by a forklift driven by one of his employees at Calleguas Ranch, marking the sixth work-related fatality in the county in the last seven months.

Aurilio Larios Guzman of Fillmore was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics shortly after the 11:20 a.m. accident, Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert Thomas said. The accident occurred in a lemon grove on the ranch property, about a mile from the farm’s Pleasant Valley Road entrance.

Guzman was the owner of SAG Farm Labor, a Fillmore-based company with 100 employees that specializes in contracting farm laborers and refueling and repairing farm equipment, said his son-in-law, Mario De la Piedra.

Investigators from Cal/OSHA arrived at the scene shortly after the accident. Agency spokesman Dean Fryer said investigators planned to interview several SAG employees, including the operator of the forklift.

“This investigation is strictly about the employees and operations of SAG Farm Labor” and not Calleguas Ranch, Fryer said. Guzman’s company had no history of industrial accidents, he said.

Thomas said Guzman went to the lemon orchard to refuel a forklift. The forklift operator, whom investigators declined to name, asked Guzman to wait until he picked up a load of four crates, packed high with lemons. Guzman started walking toward the road when he was clipped by the forklift and then crushed by the tires. Thomas said the driver’s view was obstructed by the lemon crates.

Several employees and Guzman’s relatives arrived about an hour after the accident, which occurred as more than 20 workers were picking lemons nearby.

Every day, Guzman checked on his employees at farms throughout Ventura County, De la Piedra said. “He would have worked until he was 110. His specialty was being in the field.”

Guzman started his farm labor contracting company in Fillmore in 1981, he said.

De la Piedra said his father-in-law had moved to the county in the 1940s after immigrating north from Mexico. He was married and had four sons and two daughters. The girls worked at their father’s company, he said.

“He was a farm worker who grew up and just made a success of himself,” De la Piedra said. “He started his own business and did very well with it. . . . He was a very good man, a very generous man and a very loving man. His whole family has been devastated by this tragic event.”

Coroner’s officials said an autopsy was scheduled today and funeral arrangements are pending.

“From what I understand, he was a very respectful man and very well known throughout the county,” said Mike Feiler, a deputy county medical examiner. “What a loss for the family and the community.”

The last work-related accident in the county occurred Dec. 11, when an Oxnard man was killed when the tractor he was riding on flipped over while grading a steep horse trail in Santa Rosa Valley.