Police are awaiting the result of an autopsy, expected to be conducted later on Thursday, as they continue their investigation into the death of a construction worker at a site in Villa.
The construction worker, Lemone Baptiste, of Georgetown, was pronounced dead at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital sometime after 3 p.m. Wednesday, more than half an hour after falling from the steel frame of a four-story building on which he was working.
Some reports suggested that Baptiste fell after being electrocuted, presumably by high-voltage electricity overhead mains near the construction site, where he and other workers were erecting the steel frame for the building.
When iWitness News visited the scene near the Community College gap shortly after the incident and saw no evidence that Baptiste had been wearing a harness.
An ambulance responded to the incident around 2:50 p.m. and transported Baptiste to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital in Kingstown, where he was pronounced dead.
A number of people have told iWitness News that they had observed Baptiste standing on the steel bars without any personal protective or safety equipment.
Members of the public have expressed concern about the lack of use of protective gears such as a harness, when employees work from heights at construction sites.
A number of construction workers have died after falling from a building in St. Vincent and the Grenadines over the last decade or so.
Baptiste is the second construction worker to die after an apparent fall at a construction site in just over two years.
In November 2023, Chateaubelair resident Kerwin Franklyn, 39, died hours after he fell approximately 30 feet through an elevator shaft of a building that was being constructed for a new flour mill at Campden Park.
Franklyn was an employee of Sea Operations (SVG) Limited, the building contractor.
The company had said that Franklyn had removed his harness while he and two other men were moving a plywood platform from the third level of the steel frame to the second level.
A piece of timber had gotten stuck, and Franklyn, who could not reach it, took off his harness and stretched toward the timber.
He stretched, grabbed and released the wooden platform, which sprung back and struck him on the feet, causing him to fall.
My condolences. If no safety harness was being worn then the building contractor is culpable and should be investigated.
John Davies it often happened when some people leaned a new word they throw or use it loosely without knowing the real implications. How is the contractor culpable if he provide a harness to aid his job and provide the necessary information? Is it reasonable to assume that the construction worker saw the worker removed the harness?
The law of legitimate expectation requires that’s reasonable prudent man will act in a man to preserve his life at all relevant and material times. The law of natural justice and procedural fairness also comes into play to protect the contractor if he is unaware that the worker took off the harness.