LOS ANGELES — A construction worker died Thursday after falling 53 floors from a high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles.
Witnesses reported the man fell shortly after noon from the Wilshire Grand, a hotel under construction that, when completed, will be the West Coast’s tallest building, said Officer Liliana Preciado, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department.
According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, an adult male was pronounced dead at the scene.
The man’s body apparently struck the back of a car that was traveling on the street, and a woman inside the vehicle was being examined by medical personnel.
“She is not injured,” LAFD spokeswoman Margaret Stewart said. “She is scared.”
Los Angeles Times staff photographer Mel Melcon was at the building on assignment when he said he heard a loud thump and saw the man’s body. The man’s body was lying off the driver’s side of the car, he said.
“It sounded like a bag of cement fell off the edge of the building,” Melcon said.
The man who fell had been working on the tower’s 53rd floor, which does not yet have windows. However, the floor is outfitted with an 8-foot-high “integrity fence” — a metal barrier intended to keep construction workers, building materials and tools from falling out of the tower.
A construction worker who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity said he was on the ground when he and others heard a loud noise and ran to find a man’s body by a blood-spattered car.
“We asked the driver: ‘Did you run this man over?’ She said no. That’s when I knew he had fallen off the building,” the worker said.
The worker said he returned to the building to help evacuate construction employees and discovered a hard hat lying on the 53rd floor. The helmet bore the dead man’s employee number, he said.
The dead man has not been publicly identified, although a spokeswoman for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health described him as “an electrician from ASSI.” Workers have been told that the job site will be shut down for two days for an investigation.
Although laborers at the site are required to wear tethering harnesses, no such safety device could be seen on the man’s body, or a hard hat in the vicinity of where he fell, according to witnesses.
At a news conference held at the worksite, police and construction officials said the man had worked on the construction site for just two days.
“We extend our condolences to the family,” said Chris Martin, the chief executive of Martin Project Management, which is involved in the construction of the massive building.
Asked if there was any electrical work the man could have been doing so close to the edge of the building, Martin said there wasn’t.
Sgt. Barry Montgomery, an LAPD spokesman, described the man’s death as a “tragic workplace accident.”
Neither Montgomery nor Martin would comment on whether the worker was wearing a safety harness. Martin did say that barricades have been erected at the building’s highest levels to make sure no workers go near the edge of the structure.
Reached by telephone Thursday, Michael Willey, owner of Irvine, Calif.-based ASSI Security, said the firm had been notified of the employee’s death. He said the company was not yet prepared to give a statement.
As of last week, there were about 850 workers on the site. Until now, no one had suffered serious injury at the site, according to officials.
On Thursday afternoon, police had shut down traffic at Wilshire Boulevard and Seventh, Figueroa and Flower streets.
A white tent was erected in the middle of Wilshire at the foot of the hotel, next to a white car stopped in the middle of the roadway with a passenger door open. At least a dozen men in hard hats and orange safety vests could be seen milling around the area.
Salvador Contreras, who works at a nearby valet stand on Figueroa, said he heard a very loud sound, “like when you drop a big piece of metal on concrete,” and ran around the corner to see the man’s body.
“Immediately I knew someone fell,” Contreras said.
The 1,100-foot Wilshire Grand Center — including a 100-plus-foot spire — a $1.2 billion, mixed-use office/hotel project in the Financial District, is to be completed next year, probably in the spring.
Developed by Korean Air, the tapered, glass-walled skyscraper will be topped by a domed “sky lobby” with views of the city. It will reach 30 feet higher than San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower and become what developers say is the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Currently, that title goes to the U.S. Bank building in downtown L.A.
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