Five men and one woman, all employees of Foundation Food Group on Memorial Park Drive in Gainesville, have been identified as the victims in a deadly chemical leak at their workplace.
The Hall County Sheriff's Office spent the day and night Thursday notifying the families of the deceased. HCSO released their names this morning:
- Jose DeJesus Elias-Cabrera, 45, of Gainesville
- Corey Alan Murphy, 35, of Clermont
- Nelly Perez-Rafael, 28, of Gainesville
- Saulo Suarez-Bernal, 41, of Dawsonville
- Victor Vellez , 38, of Gainesville
- Edgar Vera-Garcia, 28, of Gainesville
Five of the victims died at the workplace, while the sixth person died at a local hospital.
Hall County Sheriff Gerald Couch, at a 3:30 p.m. press conference on Thursday, asked the community to pray for the families of the victims.
"The folks that came into work today did not have any idea of what would happen, nor did their families," Couch told reporters. "They're not in a profession that you would expect something like this to happen, but here we are, and that's why I ask you for all your prayers."
In addition to the employees who died and the three who remain hospitalized in critical condition, eight others were injured. All of them, including four firefighters, have been released from Northeast Georgia Medical Center following treatment.
The Hall County Sheriff's Office will continue with the death investigation, while other agencies are tasked with investigating other aspects of the case. The Georgia Fire Marshal’s Office Investigations Unit, Hall County Fire Marshal’s Office and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have been working inside the closed facility.
The Associated Press reported that two of the six victims who died were citizens of Mexico; that information came from Mexico's Foreign Relations Department.
AP also reported that previous safety violations at the plant show no problems with the refrigeration system. The plant has been cited by OSHA for violations four times in the past 10 years, according to online records. The most serious of those was in September 2015, when 28 violations were initially cited, including citations for failing to make sure machines were properly safeguarded when being maintained to prevent injuries. Two other citations in 2017 involved employees who had fingers amputated by machinery.
The plant was known as Prime Pak Foods until January 1, when it became part of Foundation Food Group, a privately held company with four Gainesville-area locations.
The bodies of the six victims have been transported to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab for autopsy. The Hall County Sheriff’s Office plans to will provide an update on cause of death for the victims when autopsy results are released.
Three other workers from the facility remained at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville in critical condition Friday morning, according to hospital system spokesman Sean Couch. A fourth patient, a Hall County firefighter, was also in the hospital overnight. Seven other patients were treated and released from the hospital Thursday.
Follow this link to the AccessWDUN report posted Thursday, Jan. 28.
