Law enforcement officials, residents speak on deadly KCK trench collapse

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — We now know the name of the man who died after a trench collapsed in the city Thursday.

The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department (KCKPD) says 54-year-old Francisco Rodriguez, a resident of the city, died that day. The collapse happened at 16th Street and Metropolitan Avenue near the train tracks and the Kansas River.

Friday afternoon, people came by the area to look at the trench where Rodriguez died the day before.

KCKFD responded to the intersection around 2:15 p.m. Thursday, but Rodriguez’s body wasn’t found until 11:45 p.m.

“The initial reports were that an excavator was working on a hole that he was digging for fiber optics,” KCKFD Assistant Chief Scott Schaunaman said Thursday.

“When his workers came back to check on him, he was not in the excavator.”

KCKFD has sent this investigation over to the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department. Friday, police said the collapse was being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Federal leaders would not comment on this story in time for our deadline on Friday afternoon.

“A little bit,” KCK resident Javier Rubio said Friday when asked if he thought weather played a role in Thursday’s incident.

“Just for the simple fact that when soil gets wet, it’s never as strong as it was, and then it starts getting slippery and slick, and it’s just never good to work in terrain like that.”

Rubio lives in the Shawnee Heights neighborhood and hoped that Rodriguez would be found alive Thursday.

“But when I left to go get some food, his family was here, sadly,” he continued.

“It didn’t look like he had made it, so that was what really broke my heart, seeing his family there like that, and it was just like, ‘Wow,’ it can happen to anybody.'”

Rodriguez’s family showed up at the scene on Friday as well. In a post on Facebook and in a phone conversation with FOX4 on Friday, they expressed appreciation for the people who live in the area.

Fernando Diaz lives in the Shawnee Heights neighborhood too.

“Everybody around here’s like a family, or lived here for a long time, you know?” Diaz said Friday.

“They saw the people out there for hours, and they offered up their house if they needed to use the restroom, if they needed anything to drink.”

Thursday, Schaunaman said the trench was 16 to 18 feet wide and 25 feet deep. Friday afternoon, FOX4 did not know who Rodriguez was working for at the time of the incident.