A 16-year-old Guatemalan immigrant worker became the third worker to die at a Hattiesburg, Miss., poultry plant since 2020 after a machinery-related accident last week.
The boy, Duvan Tomas Perez, died in the Mar-Jac Poultry plant on James Street at around 8 p.m. on July 14. NBC News reported that a worker heard him yell for help moments before his death. “I knew he had died,” the worker added.
Federal law prohibits anyone under 18 from working in poultry plants because they are considered too hazardous for multiple reasons, including their use of power-driven equipment. NBC reported that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division have launched investigations into Perez’s death at the Forrest County plant.
In a press release from the Gainesville, Ga.,-based company, the Hattiesburg Mar-Jac Complex Manager Joe Colee said their “employees are our most valuable asset, and safety is our number one priority.”
“We strive daily to work as safely as possible and are truly devastated whenever an employee is injured,” he said, adding that “any issues identified in the investigation will be corrected immediately.”
Before Perez’s death, two adult employees also died while working at the Hattiesburg Mar Jac plant in the past three years. In December 2020, Hattiesburg Police announced that 33-year-old Joel Velasco Toto had died from abdominal and pelvic trauma in an accident involving plant equipment. OSHA records show the company fined the plant $6,827 for Toto’s death.
Then, in May 2021, 28-year-old Bobby Butler died in another machinery-related accident in the plant’s evisceration department. An OSHA report said Butler “was removing stuck chickens and chicken parts from the rotating carousel of a Meyn Maestro Eviscerator while it was operating.”
“Employee’s left sleeve (near his hand) was caught on the Meyn Maestro Eviscerator and he was pulled onto the pan below the machine and against a horizontal support member for the eviscerator, pinning his body against the support and partially under the eviscerator’s carousel,” the report said. “The employee was killed from these injuries.” The records show that OSHA fined Mar-Jac $27,306 for Butler’s death