It is the phone call that no family member wants to get.
“I’m sorry to give you this news, but your brother passed away,” Marcos Olea said, as he recalled the words a stranger gave him on Wednesday. “My heart dropped. I asked them again: ‘My brother passed away?’ They said, ‘Yes, there was an accident at the job site.' ”
Joel Olea Gomez, 27, was trench roughly 20 feet deep when it partially collapsed onto him moments after 4 a.m. Wednesday, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office. The cave-in left him trapped under dirt and a "very large" concrete pipe that construction crews were installing as part of the San Diego’s Pure Water Project at Hoyt Park Drive and Scripps Ranch Boulevard.
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“There were people that would tell him, 'You know what? You should probably look for a different job because it’s dangerous,' ” Marcos recalled, adding that, however, that didn't stop his brother from keeping the job.
Marcos told NBC 7 that Joel would constantly send him photos and videos of the construction projects he worked on. He told his family he was “so proud” of what he had built and hoped to become a professional welder and run his own company someday.
“Everyone knew him as the guy that loved working,” Marcos said.
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Marcos also said his brother was s exceptionally strong, loving and generous with his time, often working on projects for his family and friends or local church.
“He didn’t deserve this,” Nadia Cabuto said.
Cabuto met Joel when he was a 17-year-old student at the high school where she's a teacher. They eventually built a friendship that became very close, and he would visit her and her husband. Joel called her his “second mom.”
“If it’s painful to me, I cannot imagine what the family is going through,” Cabuot said through tears. “He was such a hard-working man, protective, loving. He cared for his family. He was a pillar of that family.”
Marcos told NBC 7 that the first call he got about his brother’s death was from his union. He said it was after 9 a.m. and the accident happened closer to 4 a.m. Marcos would like to know why his family wasn’t notified sooner — or by another organization — that there was an emergency.
“We still want to know why the company didn’t bother calling us when it happened, because they already knew it was my brother, they already knew who the person inside the trench was and they still didn’t bother, you know," Marcos said. “Like, nothing.”
Marcos said Joel was working the job for W.A. Rasic Construction. According to their website, it is a Long Beach-based-company that focuses on projects across the Western U.S.
NBC 7 reached out to W.A. Rasic Construction several times, but has not heard back. Cal/OSHA was also sent to the site to investigate the day it happened. Construction in the area will be stopped until their investigation is complete, but it's not clear how far along they are. NBC 7 reached out to the Cal/OSHA but has not heard back from it, either..
