Strangulation Death at Bowling Center a 'Preventable Workplace Tragedy'

OSHA has said that a pinsetter lacked safety mechanisms, which led to the fatality.

  • Sep 04, 2015

The Galaxy Bowling Center in Brownsville, Texas, has been fined for 10 serious safety violations after an employee died while performing maintenance on an automatic bowling pinsetter. The worker's shirt collar was tangled in the machine, which picks up and clears fallen pins.

OSHA found that the machines' unguarded, rotating shafts and improper shutdown of a control panel led to Garcia's death.

"Vidal Garcia died in a preventable workplace tragedy," said Michele Shield, OSHA's acting area director in Corpus Christi. "Galaxy Bowling knew the pinsetter had problems, yet employers allowed him to crawl into the machine while it was on to fix it."

An inspection also found that the company lacked a program to prevent unintentional operation of machinery during service and maintenance.

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