SENATOBIA, Miss. — Senatobia Police are investigating after a worker was electrocuted at a house under construction.
The victim was transported to Batesville but did not survive his injuries. Senatobia’s police chief said he does not have a name on the victim and for now it appears to be a tragic construction accident.
The victim’s mother identified him as 24-year-old Randal L. Williams Jr.
Eddie Carlisle has been installing sheet metal on new homes in the West Point community subdivision in Senatobia. He says Tuesday was pretty routine until around 11 a.m., when the power suddenly went out.
“Several neighbors had come out wondering what had happened to the power. I guess they were thinking we knocked it out,” Carlisle said.
Carlisle says in a few minutes he was told a construction worker operating a “boom” truck on the next block over had been electrocuted.
“The sheetrock truck was unloading sheetrock in an upstairs window and when he swung the boom around it hit the power pole and it killed him,” Carlisle said.
A spokesperson for Tate County 911 said they received a call for help from the location that someone had been electrocuted. Emergency crews were dispatched while operators tried to tell anxious co-workers how to perform CPR.
“Yea, there was some guys over there trying to give him CPR,” Carlisle said.
Carlisle says he didn’t know the man who was killed and says there are a lot of construction crews coming and going at the job site.
“We had seen it come through probably twenty minutes before it happened. It come through and went down and parked and other than that we didn’t see or hear nothin’ else about it till, till the accident,” Carlisle said.
WREG reached out to the owners of the truck, REW materials, but were told they have no comment.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration released a statement to WREG saying they began investigating the incident after the employer notified them. They confirmed the exployer’s name is Cumberland Materials, operating as Rew Materials.
