Construction worker dies after falling 53 stories from downtown LA high-rise

A construction worker died Thursday after falling 53 floors from a high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles.

Witnesses reported the man fell at 12:08 p.m. from the Wilshire Grand, a hotel under construction that, when completed, will be the West Coast’s tallest building, said Officer Liliana Preciado, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, an adult male was pronounced dead at the scene near 624 S. Figueroa St.

The man’s body apparently struck the back of a car that was traveling on the street, and a woman inside the vehicle was being examined by medical personnel.

“She is not injured,” LAFD spokeswoman Margaret Stewart said. “She is scared.”

Times staff photographer Mel Melcon was at the building on assignment when he said he heard a loud thump and saw the man’s body. The man’s body was lying off the driver’s side of the car, he said.

“It sounded like a bag of cement fell off the edge of the building,” Melcon said.

The dead man had been working on the tower’s 53rd floor, which does not yet have windows. However, the floor is outfitted with an 8-foot-high “integrity fence” -- a metal barrier intended to keep construction workers, building materials and tools from falling out of the tower.

A construction worker who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity said that he was on the ground when he and others heard a loud noise and ran to find a man’s body by a blood-spattered car.

“We asked the driver: ‘Did you run this man over?’ She said no. That’s when I knew he had fallen off the building,” the worker said.

The worker said he returned to the building to help evacuate construction employees and discovered a hard hat lying on the 53rd floor. The helmet bore the dead man’s employee number, he said.

The dead man has not been publicly identified, although a spokeswoman for Cal/OSHA described him as “an electrician from ASSI.” Workers have been told that the job site will be shut down for two days for an OSHA investigation.

Although laborers at the site are required to wear tethering harnesses, no such safety device could be seen on the man’s body, or a hard hat in the vicinity of where he fell, according to witnesses.

At a news conference held at the worksite, police and construction officials said the man had worked on the construction site for just two days.

“We extend our condolences to the family,” said Chris Martin, the chief executive of Martin Project Management, which is involved in the construction of the massive building.

Asked if there was any electrical work the man could have been doing so close to the edge of the building, Martin said there wasn’t.

Sgt. Barry Montgomery, an LAPD spokesman, described the man’s death as a “tragic workplace accident.”

Neither Montgomery nor Martin would comment on whether the worker was wearing a safety harness. Martin did say that barricades have been erected at the building’s highest levels to make sure no workers go near the edge of the structure.

Reached by telephone Thursday, Michael Willey, owner of Irvine-based ASSI Security, said the firm had been notified of the employee’s death. He said the company was not yet prepared to give a statement.

Rick Smegelski, a tower crane operator, said he heard the news over the radio. Turner Construction Co., which manages the construction site, brought everyone down from the tower and shut the job down.

Foremen were asked to conduct head counts, getting names and numbers of everyone on the site. The process took about an hour, said Dave Snodgrass, an operator of a man-lift, a special construction elevator.

As of last week, there were about 850 workers on the site. Until now, no one had suffered serious injury at the site, according to officials.

On Thursday afternoon, police had shut down traffic at Wilshire Boulevard and 7th, Figueroa and Flower streets.

A white tent was erected in the middle of Wilshire at the foot of the hotel, next to a white car stopped in the middle of the roadway with a passenger door open. At least a dozen men in hard hats and orange safety vests could be seen milling around the area.

Salvador Contreras, who works at a nearby valet stand on Figueroa, said he heard a very loud sound, “like when you drop a big piece of metal on concrete,” and ran around the corner to see the man’s body.

“Immediately I knew someone fell,” Contreras said.

Maurice Lopez works outside at the nearby Bonaventure and said he has watched the Wilshire Grand rise since ground was broken on the project. He said he was disgusted to hear that someone working on the project had died.

“That’s crazy. Usually when you walk by here, you see the guys up here attached to something. Now I’m gonna feel sick walking by here,” said Lopez, 50, of Los Angeles.

The 1,100-foot Wilshire Grand Center — including a 100-plus-foot spire — a $1.2-billion, mixed-use office/hotel project in the Financial District, is to be completed next year, probably in the spring.

Developed by Korean Air, the tapered, glass-walled skyscraper will be topped by a domed “sky lobby” with views of the city. It will reach 30 feet higher than San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower and become what developers say is the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Currently, that title goes to the U.S. Bank building in downtown L.A.

News of the man’s death was discouraging for many of the workers, who have been on site for almost three years and recently celebrated the tower’s “topping out.” They have come to think of the job as safe. “It’s tragic,” one told a reporter.

Many had worked in Las Vegas in the 2000s and have memories of the deaths that occurred during a construction boom that saw 12 workers die in 18 months. This recent death brings up bad memories, they said.

A statement issued by Turner Construction on Thursday said that counselors would be available to help workers through “this very difficult situation.”

“We were deeply saddened to learn that we have lost a member of the team building the Wilshire Grand Center,” the statement said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the worker’s family. On any given day, there are 1,000 men and women working on this project. The entire team working on this project is committed to the safety of all of our workers, and we will do everything we can to understand what happened here today and prevent it from happening again.”

Staff photographer Mel Melcon contributed to this report.