A man in Mississippi died Monday after hot asphalt poured on him while trying to fix a dump truck.
Darrell Sheriff, 41, was working on a hydraulic line underneath the truck when the tailgate opened and asphalt fell on him, the Jackson Police Department said in a statement.
In a Monday news conference shared on Facebook, Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said officers were called to AJ Materials, located in the 1000 block of E. McDowell Road, after being alerted of the incident around 10:30 a.m.
When authorities arrived at the scene, they found Sheriff “buried under a hot asphalt.”
“It appeared to be some type of malfunction with his dump truck, the vehicle that he was here to pick up asphalt with,” Wade said. “As he tried to fix the vehicle … the vehicle actually unloaded all this hot asphalt onto him.”
Wade said people on the scene tried to help Sheriff, a private contractor, to clear some of the asphalt.
Witnesses told Wade that Sheriff “tried to fight to make it through those injuries, but it was just too enormous for him to survive.”
Wade offered his condolences and said Sheriff’s family described him as a “good man, a hard-working man just trying to make a living,” adding that the incident left them “hurt” and “traumatized.”
The police department said investigations are ongoing but is classifying the death as an accident.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.