February 28, 2008

Dump-truck driver describes teen’s death at Taro landfill site to coronor’s jury

HAMILTON

A dump truck driver who saw a teenager being run over and killed by a bulldozer at the Taro landfill site believes outdoor construction sites are too dangerous for young workers.

“It’s a very dangerous place. I’ll tell you straight because it’s a lot of equipment in a very small place,” Branislav Medic, 51, told a corner’s jury probing the death of 16-year-old Salvatore Laurenzano.

At the Taro landfill site, he said there were numerous dump trucks in a noisy environment and in close proximity with heavy equipment such as the bulldozer that killed Laurenzano on Aug. 25, 2004.

A high school student, Laurenzano was employed for the summer by Dufferin Construction and had been picking rocks from the fresh fill being hauled onto the site by the dump trucks.

During on-the-job safety training, he’d been warned to keep away from heavy equipment and the danger of stepping into the blind spot of heavy machinery.

Medic testified he was in his dump truck shortly after 9 a.m. when he caught sight of the bulldozer backing up at high speed and suddenly veering in front of his vehicle.

At about the same time, he spotted Laurenzano in front of the truck.

He saw the boy crouch and turn his back moments before the bulldozer struck him. “The dozer hit him in the back,” said Medic. “The driver had no chance to see him.”

He suggested the bulldozer’s alarm system — a loud beeper that goes off when the vehicle is backing up — would have been drowned out by the surrounding noise.

He compared allowing boys on construction sites was like sending them off to war and he urged the jurors to make a recommendation prohibiting the practice.

The jurors heard the bulldozer operator, David Whalen, was charged and convicted of operating the equipment in an unsafe manner.

Canadian Press

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