A Missouri factory worker suffered a horrific death after getting stuck inside an industrial oven.
Nicolas Lopez Gomez, 38, a Guatemalan national who worked under the alias Edward Avila, died while cleaning the massive oven at the Gilster Marylee Cereal Plant in Perryville on Thursday around 3pm, police said.
He was reportedly power washing the machine from the outside. It is unclear how Gomez ended up inside the shut-down oven, but authorities do not suspect foul play.
Panicked co-workers urgently dialed 911 to try to save him once they realized he was trapped.
But less than 20 minutes after first responders arrived, the Perry County Coroner was called to the scene and Gomez was pronounced dead, according to a statement from the Perryville Police Department.
The coroner’s office is working with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate the harrowing incident.
Gilster-Mary Lee Corporation, a private food label manufacturer, has operated for 125 years and has 11 locations across Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas, according to its website.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Perryville police for more information.
The oven was turned off when Gomez became lodged inside. Panicked co-workers urgently dialed 911 to try to save him (pictured: a machine inside the Gilster Marylee Cereal Plant)
Nicolas Lopez Gomez, 38, a Guatemalan national who worked under the alias Edward Avila, died while cleaning the massive oven at the Gilster Marylee Cereal Plant in Perryville (pictured) on Thursday afternoon
Gomez’s unsettling death comes eight months after a teen working at a Canadian Walmart was baked to death inside a walk-in oven.
Gursimran Kaur’s charred remains were found by her mother inside a bakery oven of a the store she worked at in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on October 19.
The mother and her 19-year-old daughter had been living in Canada for about three years and worked at Walmart together. The pair had moved from India, where Kaur’s brother and father remain.
On the day of the deadly incident, her mother could not find her for over an hour, with her phone unusually turned off and unreachable.
Then, a bakery section employee pointed out a ‘leakage’ from inside the walk-in oven – which led Kaur’s mother to make the gut-wrenching discovery of her burned-to-death daughter.
By the time emergency responders arrived at the scene, Kaur had died inside the industrial oven.
Police ruled out foul play in November, but the store was closed until February 3 for renovations.
‘It’s great to have our customers and our associates back in the store,’ Nick Ritcey with Walmart Canada’s corporate affairs told CBC at the time.
‘Obviously the tragedy is still top of mind and it’s something that will be sad forever.’
The Halifax Walmart store where Gursimran Kaur (pictured), 19, was baked to death in a walk-in oven has decided to throw out the industrial-grade appliance
While the exact brand of the oven involved in the incident has not yet been revealed, other Walmart stores are known to have ovens like the one pictured installed
After police said the Halifax store could reopen, Walmart confirmed they would remove the walk-in oven.
Walmart spokesperson Amanda Moss told the National Post: ‘This is an extremely sad and difficult situation.
‘Removing the oven had always been part of the standard remodel program we are implementing across the country.
‘Now that the stop-work order has been lifted by the Department of Labor, the oven will be removed from this store and will no longer be used.’
