A worker at a Missouri cereal plant died after getting trapped in an industrial oven that was shut off, police said.
Police in Perryville, Missouri, about 80 miles southeast of St. Louis, were called Thursday to a Gilster-Mary Lee cereal plant around 3 p.m. “for a male stuck in an industrial oven that was shut down,” according to a news release.
Once officers and other responders were able to get to the man, he was dead, police said.
Police and the Perry County coroner’s office identified the man as Nicolas Lopez Gomez, a 38-year-old Guatemalan national. He was working under the alias of Edward Avila, police said.
“He will be greatly missed, and the company extends its sincere sympathies and condolences to his family, friends and coworkers,” Gilster-Mary Lee said in a statement.
The company said the worker, who had been an employee for nine years, “was fatally injured in a cereal drying system that was out of service.”
It was not yet clear how the worker got trapped, and his cause of death was under investigation. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been contacted about the incident and will conduct an investigation, Coroner Meghan Ellis said in a statement.
“Our offices will work with them to determine how this occurred,” she said.
Gilster-Mary Lee said it is working with OSHA and conducting its own investigation.
Last year, a 19-year-old female employee at a Walmart in Canada was found dead inside a walk-in oven at the store’s bakery department. The death was not suspicious, police said following an investigation.
