BROOKLYN MAN KILLED AFTER FALLS INTO DOUGH MIXING MACHINE
From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Brooklyn Injury Attorney)
Juan Baten, a 22-year-old Brooklyn worker from Guatamala, was killed early Monday, January 24, 2011, after falling into a dough mixer at a tortilla factory, police said.
The freak accident happened at Tortilleria Chinantla in Williamsburg at 2:30 a.m. when Baten tried to retrieve an item after dropping it inside the waist-high machine, investigators said.
Cops say security video from the plant shows the victim reaching into the mixer, as if to grab
something, and being sucked in, police said.
Investigators believe the turbine mixer instantly sucked Baten in and broke his neck.
Baten was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said there is no criminality.
No prior violations have been found as of yet at the site, but the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the incident, according to an OSHA spokesperson.
"I'm still in shock," Baten's common-law wife, Rosario Ramirez, 23, told the New York Daily News. "I got a call at 2:30 a.m. They told me he fell into the machine."
At the couple's tiny studio apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Monday afternoon, candles burned on either side of a framed picture of Baten and Ramirez and their 7-month-old daughter, Daisy Stefanie.
Fighting back tears as she spoke, Ramirez recalled how her husband was raised in a small Guatemalan village and came to America six years ago.
She said he had been working at the factory without legal documents. He earned minimum wage, but worked long hours so he could support their budding family.
"He worked six days a week, nine hours a day," she said. "He didn't complain; he liked his job."
"He did everything so we could have a better life," she added, noting she plans to bury him in his
homeland.
A fellow worker called 911 after the accident, but Baten was dead by the time emergency responders arrived, police said.
The company has been in business since 1992.
