Duvan Robert Tomas Perez, 16, is a sanitation worker at the Mar-Jac Poultry factory in Hattiesburg, Miss. A statement from the factory said Perez died after getting entangled in the machine he was cleaning.
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Duvan Robert Tomas Perez, 16, is a sanitation worker at the Mar-Jac Poultry factory in Hattiesburg, Miss. A statement from the factory said Perez died after getting entangled in the machine he was cleaning.
A teenager died underage at a poultry plant in Mississippi last week, the third accidental death at the facility in less than three years.
Duvan Robert Tomas Perez, 16, died while working at the Mar-Jac Poultry factory in Hattiesburg, Miss., last Friday. Forrest County Deputy Coroner Lisa Klem confirmed the place and time of Perez’s death, but said she could not release specifics at the request of the family.
In a press release obtained by NPR, Mar-Jac Poultry said that a cleaning worker at the plant was seriously injured when he was “entangled” in one of the machines he was cleaning. According to the statement, the factory immediately notified the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and an investigation was conducted with the company’s full cooperation.
The statement did not mention Perez’s name.
Immigrants Coalition for Justice and Equality (IAJE) spokesperson Jess Manriquez told NPR that Perez and his family are indigenous Guatemalans who immigrated about six years ago.
“Workers are put in really bad conditions,” says Manriquez. “We’ve heard from locals that there’s a lot of child labor going on at that poultry plant, so there’s a lot that needs to be investigated. But for now, we just want to help the family through the process.”
Lorena Quiroz, chief executive officer of IAJE, said in a written statement that the organization is asking OSHA and the Department of Labor to conduct a statewide investigation to end child labor and hazardous working conditions.
NPR reached out to OSHA for comment, but those calls went unanswered prior to publication.
Perez, in ninth grade, was too young to legally work at the factory. Labor Department. Federal law requires workers to be 18 years of age or older to work in meatpacking facilities due to the inherent dangers of this profession.
Mar-Jac acknowledged in his statement that the employee was under 18 and should never have been hired.
“Mar-Jac MS will never knowingly place any employee, and certainly not a minor, in a harmful manner,” the statement read. “But it appears that, at this point in the investigation, this individual’s age and identity have been misrepresented on paper.”
The company said it was conducting a thorough audit of staffing companies that employed staff to make sure an incident like this “never happens again”.
This is the third death at the Mar-Jac plant in less than three years. Under an open case OSHAan employee died from “playing horses” in December 2020. Associated Press reports at the time Joel Velasco Toto, 33, died of “abdominal and pelvic trauma due to pneumatic trauma.”
Less than seven months later, Mississippi WDAM 7 reported that Bobby Butler, 28, died in a crash involving heavy machinery in May 2021.
