At around 2pm, the 27-year-old stopped the excavation works he was carrying out at the Maghtab landfill to change the machine’s ‘bucket’. As his workmate held a metal pin in place – connecting the bucket to the excavator – the man
hammered it into place.
They decided to take turns but before his mate took a turn at hammering, the young man felt a twinge in his chest, looked at his shirt and noticed that blood was
oozing out.
It seems that a steel shard from the pin splintered and pierced the man’s chest, going straight into his heart.
“He immediately fell to the ground after that and began to drift in and out of consciousness,” his partner told The Malta Independent.
An ambulance arrived on scene to rush the patient to St Luke’s Hospital but the man died shortly after arriving at hospital.
His workmates, who described the whole incident, were absolutely gobsmacked and in shock. One of them was simply looking down at the ground, talking to himself, seemingly trying to make sense of the whole issue. Another man just could not believe what had happened and said: “I can’t understand it. He was just standing next to me, working. Unfortunate is an understatement. It must have been his time.”
The third workmate was just as incredulous at what had transpired. “How could this have happened. He was with us one minute, gone the next. He was a great guy, everybody liked him.”
Two of the Bonnici Brothers Ltd
directors – the company he worked for – came to the scene shortly after, equally dumbstruck at the news. It seems the man had been their employee for four years.
“He was a golden boy,” one of the directors said, “never complained about
anything.”
However, the directors also felt they had the duty to inform the man’s parents
personally.
An autopsy will be held to establish the exact cause of death. However everything points to a freak accident, sources said.
Duty magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera is leading the inquiry and has appointed various experts to help, while the Naxxar District police are investigating.