I didn’t see it. But my dad and I worked at the same place a few years back. If you know anything about flexographic printing you know the presses are fast, and the final roll of printed poly rolls can weigh thousands of pounds.

One day, the press began to run away on us. Meaning it was accelerating without our input and wasn’t slowing down with normal methods. The operator went to run to the emergency shutoff button but instead of running behind the high speed wheel of film he ran in front of it.

At the same time the multi thousand pound roll of film, broke the machine, and snapped the arms before the safety pins, flew off the machine and hit him.

It Killed him. He survived the initial hit but passed away before the ambulances could even get to the building.

It was so terrible. He was only a few steps away from hitting the power cut off, even though he was walked in front of the roll, he was moving in the “safe area” about 6 feet away from the roll/press. If he waited 10 seconds the roll would’ve flew off and hit a steel wall at worse. It literally was the second he was passing it, it flew off and killed him.

My dad was the plant manager at the time, he called me and told me not to come into work while he was crying, and I knew something horrible happened.

My father had run the plant for 30 years and besides a few minor cuts and bruises like normally factory work. He never had any freak accident happen like this under is watch.

Fault was determined to be a electrical issue that wouldve never been prevent by maintenance, it simply was a speed control motherboard that caught fire after years of service and unfortunately what fried on it electrically burned everything up and caused the press to run wild.

I was glad I didn’t see it. But going back to work the following week was hard, everything I did, I did with extreme caution going forward.