14 DAY TRIAL // Just yesterday, a 58-year-old man in Jersey City, US, had his skull smashed by a falling tape measure weighing merely 1 pound (0.4 kilograms). The victim, identified as Gary Anderson, died minutes later on a hospital bed.
According to the officers in charge of investigating this freak accident, the tape measure that killed the 58-year-old was accidentally dropped from the 50th floor of a residential tower under construction by one of the man's colleagues.
While on its way towards the ground, the tape somehow hit a piece of metal some 10 feet (3 meters) above the pavement and bounced off it, hitting Gary Anderson's head and causing his skull to fracture, the New York Post informs.
It is understood that, at the time the tape measure smashed into his head, the 58-year-old man had just pulled his head from inside a car that he had leaned into looking to have a chat with another worker. He was not wearing a hard hat.
Despite being rushed to a local hospital, 58-year-old Gary Anderson eventually went into cardiac arrest and passed away. He is survived by his wife and daughters, all of who were left devastated by the loss.
Word has it that, just hours after this accident, workers at the construction site went back to business as usual. “You don’t work in this environment without a hard hat. He paid the price. You gotta have it,” one of them said in a statement.