A coroner’s inquest into the 2024 death of a Saskatchewan man who was working at a wind farm construction site in New Brunswick has begun.
Matthew Brawn was killed on July 18, 2024, after a workplace accident while erecting wind turbines in the Springdale area of Kings Rural District.
Regional coroner, Danny Mallet, and a jury heard Monday that the 46-year-old Regina man was a pilot truck driver for Richards Transport Ltd. and was unloading a wind turbine tower at the Neweg Energy Project.
According to WorkSafeNB, he was “run over by a Dolly Snappel trailer, a specialized heavy-duty transport trailer designed to move extremely large, heavy and irregularly shaped cargo.”
Woodturbine Construction Team Inc. pleaded guilty to a charge under the Occupational Health and Safety Act in January 2025 for failing to ensure that an industrial lift truck was not loaded beyond its capacity. The company was fined $25,000 plus a $5,000 victim surcharge.
The two-day coroner’s inquest is now examining how the accident happened and what safety measures were in place.
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Five witnesses were questioned on the first day, including WorkSafeNB investigator Michael Cyr. He pointed to unsafe equipment use as the leading cause of Brawn’s death.
The inquest heard that the equipment used that day consisted of a truck, dolly, and a telehandler — a heavy-duty machine with a telescopic boom.
The two-part dolly trailer should ideally be moved using a truck, the jury heard, but on that day, Brawn used a telehandler to move the rear part of the trailer.
WorkSafeNB said that the task was outside of the scope of Brawn’s role, but something employees consistently do.
Cyr said the telehandler forklift had a towing capacity of 1,000 kilograms, which is far below the 27,000-kilogram load it was attempting to move.
It’s also a task that had been completed using a pickup truck at times.
In an obituary, Brawn was remembered for his dry sense of humour and his love for food, his nephew and his dogs.
“Helping was what he wanted to do, and being relied on was his specialty,” the obituary read. “We didn’t lose the guy who did everything for us; we lost the guy we wanted to help us because we wanted to be with him.”
While the jury can’t assign blame, it aims to suggest changes to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
The inquest is expected to conclude Tuesday afternoon.
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