Migrant worker dies after falling off farm wagon.

Migrant worker dies after falling off farm wagon.

By Allison Scarbrough, Editor.

HART TOWNSHIP — A 30-year-old migrant farm worker riding in a wagon hauling zucchini died after falling off the front of the wagon Wednesday morning, Sept. 7, on Lever Road, said Oceana County Sheriff Craig Mast.

Ricardo Moreno-Gomez, who is from Guatemala and temporarily living in migrant housing in rural Hart, was pronounced dead at Trinity Health Hospital in Shelby after he was transported by a private vehicle to the local hospital, said Sheriff Mast. “There was a call for Aeromed, although it was canceled right away as he was pronounced deceased at the hospital,” said Mast.

“Deputies responded (to the hospital) to assist the gentleman who is a seasonal worker. He was on a zucchini wagon that was driving eastbound on Lever Road. There was a tractor pulling a wagon, and on the wagon there were several boxes full of zucchini. The guys were riding on the wagon, because they were going from one field to another. While en route on Lever Road, the tractor made a swerve in the road — it may have been for a mailbox — and one box of either summer squash or zucchini fell off and a couple of the workers fell off the back and another one fell off the front, and he was run over by the zucchini wagon. He fell forward, and the wagon ran him over.”

The two men who fell off the back of the wagon were not injured, said Mast.

The accident remains under investigation.

“It’s been a rough day in Oceana County,” said Mast, referring to this incident and an armed robbery that occurred earlier in the morning.

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