A contractor working for the MTA died yesterday in a landslide of metal subway-station panels at the same Brooklyn work project that claimed the life of a pedestrian just six months ago.
A truck driver for the company Preferred Transit delivering the panels to the Avenue M station on the B and Q lines was beginning to unload them when the gruesome accident occurred at 8:20 a.m., eyewitnesses and transit officials said.
“He climbed on top of the panels. They were unsteady, and it looked like they didn’t tie them,” said Moses Mendes, 30, a street cleaner who saw the tragedy unfold at Chestnut and East 15th streets in Midwood.
The worker realized something was wrong and jumped off the stack, Mendes said, but the panels ended up crushing him after he reached the ground.
He was “reportedly untying the load of panels when the load shifted, fatally injuring him. The accident is still under investigation,” a New York City Transit spokesman said.
Police did not immediately release the man’s name.
Distraught construction workers at the scene said the disaster happened because the panels weren’t rigged correctly.
“They overloaded the truck at the plant, and they fell off,” a worker said.
Preferred Transit did not return messages for comment. The general contractor on the site is Granite Construction.
Each panel weighed about 1,000 pounds, a police source said.
They are “prefabricated for use as windscreens [exterior walls] of the elevated stations,” the transit spokesman said.
It’s not the first life claimed at the beleaguered construction site.
In January, passer-by Rosemary Pratt, 46, was run down by a forklift moving materials for the subway overpass repair project. That incident happened just a block away from yesterday’s disaster.
“They’re killing people. It’s been the second incident in months,” said a stagehand for the soap opera “As The World Turns,” which films in the area.
“It seems like they’ve been working here forever.”