Ironworker falls to his death on site of new residence hall


By Jesse Lewis
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, July 14, 2004

An ironworker was injured and died shortly afterwards while working at a campus construction site.

UAPD responded to a call of an injured ironworker at the construction site of the future Drachman Hall, 1246 N. Warren, on Monday at 7:22 a.m.

Allan Isaac, a 50-year-old man working on the site with Parson's Steel Company, fell from a steel beam approximately 20 feet in the air.

He was transported to University Medical Center by Tucson Fire Department and was pronounced dead at 7:40 a.m.

When police arrived, they saw workers huddled around the man's body on the ground and observed that he was bleeding from the back of the head. There was a four-foot pool of blood around him.

None of the other workers had witnessed the fall, but all were deeply upset that it had happened.

"It freaked me out. That kind of thing is really scary," said Joel Marquez, a pipe fitter and plumber who was working with a different construction team nearby.

Marquez said he has been on jobs before where others have died and thinks most of those kinds of accidents are preventable.

Denzil Wolff, construction supervisor, told police that Isaac should have been putting up perimeter cable on the second story, but he was found about 30 feet from the perimeter.

"I don't have a clue why he was there," Wolff said.

UAPD determined that no crime had been committed and turned the case over to Mark Norton of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health for the Industrial Commission of Arizona.

"We don't have much information; we are still trying to determine the cause of the fall," Norton said.

Police notified Isaac's next of kin in Tuba City, AZ.

- Mitra Taj contributed to this report.