Employee #1, a maintenance worker, was called to a robotic cell because a pin was sticking. Instead of following proper procedures and opening the gate, which would have shut down the unit, for some reason he climbed over the 6 ft high fence and tried to repair the unit while the robot was operating. Employee #1 became caught in the machine and was killed. He had received about five or six weeks of training and had worked on robots since March of 1999. Entering the cell in this manner was forbidden by company regulations.

Employee #1, a default chaser at the boxed meat storage facility of a meatpacking plant, was observing a coworker do maintenance on the Lovejoy coupler of an outbound conveyor. This meat storage and distribution system was largely automated and computer controlled. A series of conveyors moved the boxed meat to carousels for storage. Robots picked the boxes off the inbound conveyors and placed them on carousels. They also took the boxes out of storage to be shipped as needed. As the coworker performed his duties, Employee #1 asked him what he was doing. The coworker looked up and then heard the robot activate as Employee #1 stepped up on the end of the inbound conveyor. The robot came down to the level of the inbound conveyor and caught Employee #1 against it. He was struck on the back of the head and became trapped with his body in a position folded forward. Coworkers tried unsuccessfully to manually remove the robot, and eventually were able to move it using the main controls. Once released, Employee #1 fell approximately 15 ft to the floor. He died of severe blunt force trauma to the back of his head, and was most likely dead before he fell.

Employee #1 was crushed when he became trapped between the lift arm clamp brackets of a palletizer robot. He died of mechanical asphyxia.