‘His Hobby Was His Children’: Man Reportedly Dies Under Pile Of Dirt At Construction Site

A construction worker in Arizona reportedly died when a hole he was working on collapsed Monday.

Police said 44-year-old Ronald Andrew Baquera Jr. was working approximately six feet underground when the collapse occurred, according to Arizona Family. Fire crews arrived at the scene just after 1 p.m. Multiple co-workers of Baquera were trying to dig him out of the hole with heavy equipment, Goodyear Police Department Chief Jose Gonzalez said.

As they worked to move dirt out of the hole, more dirt fell into it, according to the police chief. “And after about thirty minutes of those efforts, we quickly realized that it was no longer going to be a rescue but it was going to be a recovery at that point,” he said.

Due to critical infrastructure — including gas, water and power lines — personnel had to slow down their recovery efforts to avoid risk to the community, Gonzalez continued.

Personnel recovered Baquera’s body at approximately 2 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Arizona Family reported.

Baquera loved to work with cars and go with his daughter to karate, Melissa Prado, the mother of two of his kids, told ABC15 Arizona.

“My daughter is really torn up. She spends almost every day with him. She’s a little distraught, and my son’s angry,” she said.

“His hobby was his children,” Prado told the outlet.

Rubicon Companies, a company operating in the region, said in a Tuesday statement that Baquera was not employed by the company or any of its subcontractors but was “still a brother of trade.”

“Upon learning of the collapse, our personnel — though not assigned to that section — coordinated with other onsite crews and emergency responders to assist in efforts to locate and recover the worker,” the statement read. “Our team is committed to industry best practices and continuous improvement in worker protection to make sure incidents like this do not happen.”

The Daily Caller reached out to the Arizona Department of Occupational Safety and Health for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.