A Brockton man went to work Wednesday morning and didn’t make it home alive

BROCKTON – Federal, state and local investigators are conducting an active and ongoing probe into a fatal construction incident Wednesday in Hanson, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz announced.

At 11:30 a.m., Hanson Police received a 911 call for a report of a man trapped at a construction site at 50 Dwight Street. Hanson Police and Hanson Fire responded and found a single-family home with a partial foundation collapse on one side, and a male worker trapped beneath. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. He has been identified as 51-year-old Gerceir Osvaldo DeFaria.

Hanson Police contacted Massachusetts State Police assigned to the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to begin the investigation.

Simultaneously, Hanson Police contacted the Plymouth County Technical Rescue Team, and it became a recovery mission to work safely to extricate the victim. The team, along with Hanson Police and Fire, worked for over three hours before the victim’s body was removed from the site at approximately 2:49 p.m.
.
Preliminarily, it appears that the property homeowner was having the basement waterproofed, and a trench was being dug on the side of the home when the foundation attached to the house broke away and fell, pinning DeFaria underneath.

The investigation is active and ongoing by OSHA, Massachusetts State Police, and Hanson Police.