Friday, February 27, 2015

FATAL CRASH BETWEEN TRAIN CARS AND TRACTOR IN LAKESHORE, ONTARIO, CANADA

















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.”