POUGHKEEPSIE – New Jersey construction company OneKey, LLC has been sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay a $218,417 fine, and its principal, Finbar O’Neill, 57, of Paramus, New Jersey, was sentenced to three months in federal prison following their guilty plea to willfully violating Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations resulting in the death of a construction worker in Poughkeepsie on August 3, 2017.
In 2017, OneKey and O’Neill implemented a soil compaction plan at a construction site at 1 Dutchess Avenue in Poughkeepsie. The plan involved piling large amounts of dirt, called “surcharges,” on top of the sites of three future buildings.
An engineering firm designed a plan for the use of the surcharges. OneKey and O’Neill did not follow the plan and instead, built a wall to hold back one of the surcharges, so workers could get started on the buildings next to it.
OneKey and O’Neill did not consult with any qualified person to see if the wall could withstand the weight to be placed on it by the surcharge.
While people were working next to the wall, OneKey kept using construction machinery to add dirt to the surcharge pressing against the wall. The people working near the wall were not warned about the dangers it created.
OneKey and O’Neill heard from the workers at the site that the wall was not safe, but they did not fix it.
On August 3, 2017, workers complained that construction machines were driving on top of the surcharge, adding dirt to it. Later that day, the wall collapsed and as it fell, one worker ran away from the wall, but couldn’t get away in time and was killed.
