Florida landscaper dies in gruesome wood chipper incident

Remember the scene from “Fargo” in which a pregnant sheriff stumbles on a hit man feeding his partner-in-crime into an industrial wood chipper?

A Florida man died on Monday afternoon after falling into a wood chipper like that in an accident described by people at the scene as “horrifying.”

According to a local NBC affiliate, the man was landscaping in Davie, Fla., at an intersection flanked by a public park and a Jewish community center when somehow he fell into the machine.

The deceased man identified by police as 42-year-old Hernan Gutierrez was clearing brush with two other workers who weren’t present when his entire body was pulled through the wood chipper, according to the Associated Press.

One of the workers ran to a nearby house and asked a resident to call 911, CBS Miami reported. But by the time rescue workers arrived, it was obvious the victim was already dead.

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Area residents were traumatized by the incident.

“You hear about this stuff in the movies, but then all of the sudden it happens right outside your doorstep,” Joseph Horta, who lives in the neighborhood, told CBS Miami. “All of a sudden I hear all these sirens and I look outside and I see some piles of blood. It was horrifying.”

“I think it’s sad, very sad,” resident Linda Simmons told the NBC affiliate. “Guys were working really hard trying to make a living, and he just made a mistake, I guess.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Davie Police spokesman Dale Engle. “This is a gruesome scene.”

“Authorities said police investigators and crime scene technicians were finding the scene extremely upsetting and that counselors would be made available to them,” CBS reported.

Police said there was no immediate suspicion of foul play, but were still trying to determine exactly what happened, the AP said.

Someone from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration came to the scene, according to the NBC affiliate, which also reported: “According to OSHA, from 2000 to 2013, there were 11 wood chipper deaths in the United States, none of them in the state of Florida.”

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