Member of an agricultural cooperative Santaella He faces four years and six months in prison for the crime of manslaughter and another against the workers’ rights for the death of a truck driver crushed by alpaca blocks when he unloaded the alpacas at the company’s facilities. This defendant had a history of poor safety at work.
This worker had been hired two years earlier by this cooperative to carry out the functions of truck driver during the straw and fodder campaign. On July 10, 2018, the company entrusted him with the transport of straw alpacas in a truck to which a trailer platform was attached, from a farm in Seville to the facilities of this agricultural cooperative in Santaella.
To do this, other company workers placed the bales on the semi-trailer at the original location and the driver attached the load with slings. Around 3:30 p.m., the driver of this load had already made three trips and at that time, to the place provided for this purpose in the warehouse of this municipality of Campaignhe prepared to release the slings, starting with those closest to the cabin, starting with the transverse ones and ending with the two horizontal ones.
However, as the driver turned his back on the load, in the rear area, suddenly the last five bales of straw fell on the operator, who was buried and unfortunately died due to a crush.
It turns out that the accused – one of the partners of the cooperative society – was responsible for ensure health workers, despite the fact that he was disabled on the date of the events due to court decision specifically convicted of a crime against workers.
However, according to the prosecutor, the accused allowed his workers to carry out the transport and unloading of goods without having previously assessed the risks linked to lashing and undocking and therefore without having adopted measures preventive measure this would have avoided the risks, and if necessary, the death of the driver.
This happened because the accused did not notify the insurance company risk prevention that she had contracted, that her cooperative, in addition to collecting fodder, was also dedicated to harvest transport and therefore, the technician who came to assess the risks of the cooperative in January 2018 did not include anything in her report regarding this activity and did not train any of the members. six workers of the cooperative society on how to stack the straw bales in the semi-trailer or transport them safely.
Thus, since the defendant failed to train or inform the workers on the safe way to get to place the packages In the truck, the load was located protruding at least 50 centimeters from the truck platform and, given the driver’s ignorance of the risk he faced due to his lack of training, when he removed the slings, he stood in front of the alpaca packages. , who gave in to their poor distribution and hit the worker.
The cooperative had taken out civil liability insurance with an insurer. The accused was sentenced by a final judgment of March 15, 2018 to six months in prison for the commission of a human rights offense. workers and felony injury due to gross recklessness.
Homicide by gross negligence
The deceased was married and the father of two children. The facts, in the opinion of the public prosecutor, constitute a crime against workers’ rights and a crime of homicide for serious recklessness.
The prosecution adds that the accused has the aggravating circumstance of recidivism compared to the crime against workers’ rights Therefore, the accused should be sentenced to two years and six months in prison, as well as a fine of 4,200 euros. Likewise, the prosecutor requests a special disqualification for the position of responsible for monitoring of workers’ health for two years and six months.
In addition, the public prosecutor requests that the person prosecuted for the offense of reckless homicide two years in prison and compensation for the family of the deceased of more than 200,000 euros. The trial will take place next month before the criminal court in the capital Córdoba.
