On the late afternoon of Sunday, July 9th, around 6 pm, twin brothers Dennis and Jeffrey Mead went shopping at the Federal Road Home Depot in Danbury, Connecticut. The brothers were looking for some landscape timber. According to Dennis Mead, he and his brother were looking through some 3′ x 5′ timbers, when they heard a creaking noise, looked up, and saw a one ton pallet of timber starting to fall on them. They tried vainly to hold it back, but the pallet fell on them, landing squarely on Jeffrey, a 41 year old bank teller and native of Connecticut. Dennis began yelling that his brother was caught under the pallet. After Jeffrey Mead was pulled out from the weight, he was rushed to Danbury hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy released a couple of days later indicated that he died of “multiple blunt trauma injuries.” The Home Depot store manager told the Danbury News-Times that he did not know what caused the accident. “No employees were involved, and no equipment was involved. That’s why we can’t figure out what happened. The only one around was his brother.” The newspaper reported that two pallets were stacked on top of each other, to a height of roughly 8 feet, with some loose stock stuck in between the pallets. In the same Danbury store, Bernadette Nelson broke her foot in May when a piece of lumber fell on her. She told the News-Times “I felt so bad when I heard about it (Mead’s death). This shouldn’t have happened.” She warned Home Depot in a letter that conditions at the store should be improved, and that in her case she asked for employee help to move lumber, but was told staff were “too busy” to help her. Nelson’s lawyer, who is preparing a possible lawsuit against Home Depot, had some blunt words about the Danbury Home Depot: “It’s a minefield for consumers,” said Attorney Alan Barry. “The place is a hazard zone. It’s for commercial contractors, and they invite the general public in like they were selling groceries. It’s like they think that everybody that walks in is a 250 pound guy who can just grab this stuff off the shelf.” Nelson suggested to Home Depot that more attentive customer service could prevent shoppers from being injured when handling heavy merchandise.
This is the second death at a Home Depot in recent months that we have listed on “newsflash” (see story below from Twin Falls, Idaho). How many people are killed each year at Home Depot or Lowe’s, or Wal-Mart? Thousands of slip and fall accidents are reported each year. In the case of Home Depot, where heavy equipment is being operated, and heavy merchandise is being stacked high, shouldn’t customers and employees alike be required to wear hard hats, as if you were entering a construction site? The death of Jeffrey Mead and the three year old child in Idaho could have been prevented with more cautious safety requirements. Home Depot, on it own initiative, should begin issuing orange hard hats for consumers entering their stores. The cost would be less than one settlement reached in a personal injury lawsuit, and consumers would probably like the idea of wearing a real hard hat. Until such action is taken, Home Depots will remain a “minefield’ for customers, giving a darker meaning to the words “shop till you drop”. If the company fails to act, state or federal safety regulations should be written, and each store should be required to post its safety record in a prominent place in the store wher customers can compare safety records among retailers.