San Francisco<\/a> construction worker who was buried alive when a trench collapsed around him during a tunnel project.<\/p>\nDistrict Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced Monday that charges were filed against John Finbarr Darcy, 62; John William Tobin, 39; and Filiberto Poblano Perez, 52, in connection with the death of 25-year-old Javier Romero. The three men, alongside their employer, D’Arcy & Harty Construction Inc., also face charges of involuntary manslaughter and violating workplace safety standards.<\/p>\n
All defendants have pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n
Lethal trench collapse<\/p>\n
The backstory<\/p>\n
On the morning of Sept. 28, 2023, Romero was working inside a 2.5-foot-wide, 5-foot-long, and 8-foot-deep trench near the corner of Oak and Divisadero streets. The project, contracted to D’Arcy & Harty Construction Inc., was part of a tunnel rehabilitation project for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.<\/p>\n
According to prosecutors, the trench was not properly supported. When a vehicle drove past the site, the trench caved in. Romero was buried under sandy soil and died of mechanical asphyxia.<\/p>\n
At the time of the incident, Darcy was the site safety representative, Tobin was the project manager, and Poblano Perez was the crew foreman directly supervising Romero at the site.<\/p>\n
Safety violations<\/p>\n
Dig deeper<\/p>\n
Jenkins said her office filed criminal charges following the conclusion of a Cal\/OSHA workplace investigation.<\/p>\n
“The construction company that employed this 25-year-old was aware of this danger, as they had been cited with a safety complaint for the same issue on another project just three weeks prior,” Jenkins said.<\/p>\n
At the time of the cave-in, the shorter side of the trench had no support to hold back the soil, while the longer sides only had partial shoring in place, Jenkins said.<\/p>\n
A Cal\/OSHA inspector determined that D’Arcy & Harty Construction violated excavation safety standards under Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations.<\/p>\n
The construction company still has not responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced involuntary manslaughter and workplace safety violation charges against three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-503213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}