By Jeremy O'Brien, For The Miami Student
The Butler County Coroner's office has released information that Oxford residents Florjan Nilaj, age 25, and Gazmend Vukaj, age 40 were killed Friday night after falling from scaffolding around a Reily Twp. water tower.
The water tower was owned by Southwest Regional Water District at the 3500 block of Oxford Reily Road.
According to the Butler County Coroner's office, both men worked for Southweat Regional Water District and were working at the time of the fall.
According to the Coroner's Office, Nilaj died of head trauma while Vukaj died of multiple traumatic injuries. The men were working on painting and sandblasting the water tower when a pulley on their lift broke and they fell.
Neither Nilaj nor Vukaj were wearing safety harnesses at the time of the incident. Norma Pennock, operations manager for the Southwest Regional Water District, said workers are always told and required to wear safety harnesses.
"According to their coworkers," Pennock said. "both of them had worked all day long that day and normally did work properly harnessed."
Pennock said that Nilaj had worked with the company they were contracted with, V&T Painting, for three years and Vukaj for over five.
"For reasons we won't know, they chose for that last bit of work that day to take off the harnesses and do without them," Pennock said. "We just won't know. People in all kinds of jobs take shortcuts sometimes for poor reasons. It is very sad."
The incident is currently under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
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