FEBRUARY 27, 2015
LAKESHORE, ONTARIO, CANADA
One person was killed Friday afternoon in a rural workplace
accident involving a tractor and several stationary railcars.
Emergency crews were on scene in the 400 block of Elmstead
Road in Lakeshore at what neighbours describe as an oil recycling facility,
where workers convert cooking oil into fuel.
Ken Knapp, the owner of Ken Knapp Ford in Essex, confirmed
the dead man is his nephew Shane Knapp.
“It’s just a tragedy,” said Knapp from Fort Myers, Fla.
Knapp said his son called to tell him about the death.
Shane is the son of Knapp’s brother Bill, and said the two
ran a company together collecting and refining cooking and other oils.
“All I know is they did well at it,” said Knapp.
Knapp said he didn’t know the circumstances of how Shane
died.
“He was a hard working fellow,” said Knapp, who said Shane
had a toddler-aged son. “He was just a very witty, smart kid, although he’s not
a kid.”
Ontario Provincial Police would not confirm details about
how the accident occurred, but residents who spoke to workers say a young man
was somehow pinned between the tractor and a row of tanker cars that were
stretched along a shunting track next to the refinery.
The Knapps were using the tractor to move the railcars when
the son jumped off the tractor and became pinned, one resident explained.
“They were moving the trains back, so they could either
empty one or fill one,” said Gary Mazzali, who lives across the road from the
work site. “When the tractor stopped, he jumped down. When he jumped down, the
tractor jerked and he got pinned.”
Mazzali heard the details from a worker who left the site
shortly after the arrival of emergency responders, including the OPP, Lakeshore
Fire Service and Essex County Emergency Services.
All Mazzali could do was watch. Standing on Elmstead with
another neighbour, he could see emergency crews working around the red tractor
that still sat closely to a line of the black tanker cars.
The cars were stretched along a shunting track that runs parallel
to CP track. The investigation by OPP and CP police went into the evening, but
no further details are expected to be released until possibly Saturday morning.
Residents in the area say the business, which doesn’t have
an official name other than a corporate number, has been there for at least 12
years. Some of them know the Knapps well and expressed their sympathies as they
looked on from their homes.
“It’s absolutely tragic,” said Beverley Lesperance. “They’re
a hard working family, just really good people.”