A Guatemalan Canero is Mangled by a Harvester on Santander Farm

There is tragic news in the west at Santander, whose offices are headquartered in Guatemala. A twenty-four year old Guatemalan national was mangled around midday today by a harvester at the company’s cane fields in Valley of Peace. The field worker, Francisco Andres Antonio Sebastian, was part of several crews who were harvesting sugar cane. Sebastian took a break and his crew continued working. But he lost his life just before twelve noon when he was crushed by the heavy equipment. News Five spoke via phone today with the Compliance and Public Relations Manager of Santander, Beverly Burke, about the tragic incident.

On the Phone: Beverly Burke, Compliance and Public Relations Manager, Santander

“We received a call in the office letting us know that there was an accident in the field. This occurred just about midday and when we got out there, it was really to witness a really unfortunate situation and we unfortunately lost one of our employees.”

Duane Moody

“What actually transpired? What has the investigation shown so far?”

Beverly Burke

On the Phone: Beverly Burke

“Well, we are harvesting right now and we do have the harvesters along with our tractors working in the field and they work in groups based on the areas that we are harvesting and one of the field guys were somewhere in the field unbeknown to the driver of any of the heavy equipment, which really protocol dictates that that should never be, an upon recognizing that…well the tractor driver recognized that some foreign object filled up in the back of the harvester, he stopped the harvester driver and upon checking exactly what happened, they realized that it was indeed one of their coworkers. We have spoken to the parties involved who were actually working in that particular field at the time who we have to rely on their account. As you are aware, the police have been on the field and they too did their investigation, etc.  And their account is that they believe that probably the guy was taking a little break in the cane field. Which when you are utilizing heavy equipment there is no way for you to see through the cane and unfortunately he was taking a break and whatever the case may be and unfortunately it ended up in such a tragedy.”

The body of Sebastian was taken to the Western Regional Hospital in Belmopan and after the post mortem, his body will be returned home to his family.