Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of Li­onel Reis, the As­so­ci­at­ed Brands In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed (ABIL) em­ploy­ee who plunged to his death at a San Juan ware­house on Sat­ur­day evening, are call­ing for a full and trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Reis was in a safe­ty bas­ket at­tached to a Ben­di Fork­lift F-20 op­er­at­ed by a col­league when the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 6.30 pm. The co-work­er told po­lice he had just raised the bas­ket to about 30 feet when he heard box­es shift­ing. Look­ing up, he saw Reis falling to the ground.

Reis’ com­mon-law wife, Shen­nel Ec­cles, said she and oth­er rel­a­tives rushed to the ware­house but were ig­nored and giv­en no in­for­ma­tion. They have since de­mand­ed the re­lease of CCTV footage and the find­ings of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (OS­HA) in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ec­cles al­so high­light­ed a pho­to cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia which ap­pears to show Reis with­out per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment.

“If he was op­er­at­ing a fork­lift, why was he up there? And in the pic­ture on Face­book he had no PPE. There are a lot of pieces miss­ing from this sto­ry,” she said.

Po­lice al­so re­port­ed­ly found no safe­ty har­ness on the vic­tim at the scene.

Reis, 38, had worked at ABIL for about four years and had tak­en an ex­tra week­end shift to help cov­er ex­pens­es ahead of his birth­day on Oc­to­ber 5. Ec­cles said they had spo­ken just over an hour be­fore his death about din­ner plans.

“I was get­ting ready to cook be­cause he was com­ing home for 10. Next thing I get a mil­lion missed calls. My aunt said, ‘Lenny fell off the fork­lift at work and dead.’ I was in shock—I had just spo­ken to him,” she said.

Ec­cles added that their young son is dev­as­tat­ed. “That was his eye­ball. When he was with me, it was al­ways, ‘Dad­dy, Dad­dy, Dad­dy,’” she said.

Rel­a­tives are al­so con­cerned about the fu­ture of Reis’ two chil­dren, for whom he was the pri­ma­ry provider.

ABIL, in a me­dia re­lease, con­firmed that both the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and OS­HA are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.

“Out of re­spect for this process and the pri­va­cy of Mr Reis’ fam­i­ly and loved ones, we are un­able to pro­vide any fur­ther com­ment on the de­tails of the in­ci­dent at this time,” the com­pa­ny said.

De­scrib­ing Reis as a “long-serv­ing and high­ly val­ued mem­ber” of its team, ABIL ex­pressed “pro­found” sor­row and pledged sup­port for his fam­i­ly, along with coun­selling ser­vices for em­ploy­ees. “We are com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and will com­mu­ni­cate any up­dates,” the com­pa­ny said.