He was 15, his relatives said, not old enough for a driver's license. He had yet to even shave. But he was eager to work -- to buy a Ford Mustang, bright yellow, and a big house with a pool for his family. And when he got his next paycheck, he told his younger cousins, they would have a pizza party and go to the fair around the corner from his Wheaton home.As I've written before, the words "freak" and "accident" imply "unexpected." This is clearly not the first worker who has fallen into a grinder -- which is why 15-year olds aren't allowed to operate them.
Instead, three weeks after he found work, Michael Francisco Barrios is a case file at the Maryland medical examiner's office, a victim of a freak accident Tuesday in North Potomac. During a landscaping job, authorities said, he fell into the grinding machinery of a mulch-spreading truck. A co-worker found his remains a short while later.
According to the employer, TopMulch, Barrios had papers showing that he was 17.
