“There is no way on earth this man should have been operating that machinery alone,” said attorney Matthew Graham with the J. Alexander Law Firm
DALLAS — When Angel Rojas learned at 19 they he was going to be a father, his wife Nataly says he did the right thing: got the best job he could so that he could provide for his wife and family.
Rojas died after a workplace accident at that job last week, and attorneys for his family claim that gross negligence by his employer, a funeral home, is to blame.
“He was our foundation,” Nataly Rojas said on Monday, one week after her husband’s accident and one day after his funeral in Garland. “He wanted a home. We were just talking about a home the week before he passed,” she said. “What any man wants is a home, full of love. And a job that would be able to do that. That’s what Angel’s goals were.”
Angel Rojas worked at Restland Funeral Home on Greenville Avenue in Dallas. Part of his job was using heavy equipment to move concrete burial vaults and lids to burial sites. Last Monday, at a storage yard where the vaults and lids are kept, a vault fell and pinned him to the ground. Standard burial vaults can weigh between 1,500 and 2,500 pounds. Rojas’ phone shows that he made one call for help. The second call went to his wife, but it went to voicemail.
“He just wanted to be held,” Nataly Rojas says of the message he left. “He was scared. He told me he wanted to go home. He told me he loved me and he wanted to go home.”
Nataly Rojas says she called 911 and raced to the funeral home within minutes of receiving the message.
“My husband was pinned under a vault pleading for help, pleading for air,” she said.
Dallas Fire Rescue tells WFAA that when firefighters arrived, Angel Rojas was pinned from the waist down by the vault. The department said the first responding units were able to lift the vault using hydraulic spreaders and air bags and free him. Nataly Rojas says that by that point, he’d been pinned down by the vault for more than 45 minutes. He was rushed to a hospital where he died.
“What we know about this situation is that there is no way on earth this man should have been operating that machinery alone,” said attorney Matthew Graham with the J. Alexander Law Firm, who is now representing Nataly Rojas and her family. “He shouldn’t have been working alone. He shouldn’t have been moving things of that weight alone.”
“We believe it is grossly negligent of Restland for them to have put him in that position and for them to have caused his death, frankly,” Graham said.
In a written statement issued to WFAA, Restland Funeral Home, headquartered in Houston, said, “We are saddened by the loss of our long standing valued employee. We are cooperating with the authorities to determine the cause. His family and his fellow Restland employees need our support and we ask that we all give them space and time to grieve.”
“My husband was a smart worker,” Nataly Rojas said. “My husband knew the risk of a small error. My husband knew the precautions to everything he was doing. I don’t know what happened. But whatever did happen, he never should have been there alone.”
“It’s a tragedy, it truly is,” said Matthew Graham, who says the firm is gathering information to see if a lawsuit will be necessary. “And if there is one thing we can do for his memory and for this family is to try to keep this from happening to anybody else.”
Angel Rojas was 24 years old. His wife says he often complained about the workload, the hours, and the difficulty of working solo. But she says he continued working at the funeral home and cemetery, hoping he was helping other families during their time of loss. He also wanted to keep providing for his namesake, Angel Noel, who turns four years old next month.
“He was a hard-working father,” Nataly Rojas said. “Angel was amazing all around.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating how and why he died and who is to blame.
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