TILLSONBURG – A Bell Canada worker died after falling several meters from a ladder while working on a utility line in this town southeast of London, witnesses say.
TILLSONBURG – A Bell Canada worker died after falling several meters from a ladder while working on a utility line in this town southeast of London, witnesses say.
Residents on Delevan Crescent, located between 2nd and 3rd streets, say the 54-year-ol worker was cutting a utility wire leading from a pole to a private home on the street before falling to his death on Monday.
“It was horrible,” said Linda Williams, who was walking her dog around 11:30 am Monday when she came upon an ambulance and two police cruisers and emergency workers tending to a man on the ground. “It’s very sad. You don’t expect anything like that to happen.”
Union officials identified the deceased as Paul Totten, a member of Unifor Local 45, which represents workers with Bell Canada, Expertech, Bell Technical Solutions and Transervice.
“I would like to send our condolences to the family of Brother Paul Totten,” Scott Doherty, a national representative with Unifor, wrote in a statement. “Everyone has a right to work safe and come home alive. Our persistent struggle for workplace safety improvements must never end. Rest in peace Paul.”
In a statement to The Free Press, a Bell Canada official said the company is “deeply saddened” by the death. “We are working closely with authorities on the investigation into the incident.”
Joan Weston, who lives nearby, arrived home to find emergency crews and investigators a few hours after the incident. She said she spoke with the man — she said he was a Bell Canada employee — just hours earlier about a utility box on her lawn, which needed to be repaired.
“I was shocked,” Weston said. “I was very sad because I had just talked with him an hour and a half before.”
Oxford OPP say officers and paramedics responded about 11:10 am Monday to a report of a non-traffic accident on Delevan Crescent, where a technician working on-site was “injured due to a fall,” police said Tuesday.
The 54-year-old man was taken to hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, police said.
Delevan Crescent was closed for several hours on Monday and was reopened by Tuesday morning.
Residents said investigators from Oxford OPP and Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) were at the scene for eight hours on Tuesday. Williams and Weston joined other neighbors to lay flowers nearby in his memory.
Officials with the ESDC are investigating. The agency oversees social programs and the labor market at the federal level. A labor program that’s part of ESDC “is responsible for protecting the rights and well-being of both workers and employers in federally regulated workplaces,” its website states.