JACKSONVILLE (KYTX) - Investigators want to know what went wrong after a construction site accident left two Tyler men dead. A large concrete wall fell on top of them. CBS 19's Amanda Roberson was on site moments after the wall fell.
60-year-old Donald Starling and 68-year-old Hollis Morris were working with their subcontractors to reinforce a 40 plus year old retaining wall at the end of this drive. The two men were managing the project and while the crew took a few minutes to rest, the wall came falling.
"I've seen ditches cave in but I've not had a wall collapse like this one before," said Cherokee County Sheriff James Campbell.
Sheriff Campbell got the call just after 9am Monday that two men were trapped under the retaining wall. "There's an old retaining wall about 12, 14 foot high, about a foot thick. It's been there for probably 40 something years."
He said a crew had came in to dig down on the side of the wall to put steel beams along the retaining wall to reinforce it.
There were six contractors working on this wall when it fell. CBS 19 spoke with one of the workers off camera. He said they hadn't even been here an hour when the wall fell. They were taking a break, waiting for those steel support beams to arrive to reinforce the wall when a chunk of it came tumbling down almost instantly.
Donald Starling and Hollis Morris were sitting right where that wall fell.
"It killed them instantly," Sheriff Campbell explained. "They're having a very difficult time getting them out. They're having to do a lot of it by shovel because it's a location where you can't get a big piece of equipment."
It took more than three hours for crews to get the two men out from under the concrete.
"A very very unfortunate accident," said Sheriff Campbell. "Came out to put a days work in and got killed."
It's a day no one was prepared for, especially the two families who have lost a father, husband, and friend.
Crews were reinforcing that wall because it's the future site for a patio at the lake house property.
Another crew of workers were on site building the dock on the same property. All of those contractors stayed on site throughout the day trying to help free those men.
There's no official word on why the wall fell. The worker CBS 19 spoke with said they'd done some work over the weekend, digging a ditch to add those steel posts, but the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office has notified the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to begin a formal investigation.
Hollis Morris' son, 45-year-old Rodney Morris, was sitting next to the two men when the accident happened. He escaped the wall falling but does have some broken bones. He's stable at ETMC in Jacksonville.
