Los Angeles
CNN
—
Gabriel Infante, 24, was dazed and sweating in the unforgiving sun. The heat index was over 100 degrees on the fifth day of his new job installing fiber optic cables in the San Antonio, Texas, area.
Late that afternoon, he lunged at another coworker in a fit of delirium, alleging that his coworkers “were going to kill him,” according to his mother’s recollection of events told to her by Gabriel’s friend and coworker, Joshua Espinoza. Infante then fell and hit his head. The site supervisor demanded the police be called and that Infante be drug tested – even after EMTs arrived and said he was showing signs of a heat stroke, according to a lawsuit his mother filed in Bexar County, Texas, in June.
But Infante wasn’t overdosing. He was dying of heat exhaustion, and his body was shutting down. Infante later died in the hospital in the early morning hours of June 24, 2022.
“He went to work Monday. By Friday, he had his accident, and my son was gone Saturday morning,” Velma Infante, his mother, told CNN. “Basically, they told me his organs were fried.”
Gabriel’s body temperature was nearly 110 degrees by the time he reached the emergency room, according to the Bexar County medical examiner’s initial autopsy report that was conducted just hours after Infante passed.
“Any worker, in any type of job that you do, should be able to come home in the evening to their families,” his mother said.
The employer, B Comm Constructions, declined to comment to CNN.
From 2011 to 2021, there were at least 436 work-related deaths in the US due to environmental heat exposure. More deaths are expected as record-shattering heat becomes the new norm.
CNN spoke to two women who lost loved ones who died while working outdoors in the extreme heat.
“They cannot work under the same working conditions that they were working under 20 years ago. The weather is not the same anymore,” Carla Gates, whose husband Eugene Gates, 66, passed away this June while delivering mail in the Dallas area, said in an interview with CNN at her home in Texas. “We have to save these workers’ lives.”
05:04 – Source: CNN
‘His organs were fried.’ They died working in extreme heat. Hear what their loved ones want you to know
Gates’ late husband, Eugene, had worked for the US Postal Service for 36 years. In June, he left home for his usual delivery route in the Lakewood, Texas, area. He had just been getting back to work after taking a week off, which was partially motivated by a desire to have some time to relax before Texas’s triple-digit-heat set in, according to Carla.
“He had a beautiful smile,” Gates said. “Once you got to know him…He would talk your ear off like you’ve known him for years.”The two would typically text each other throughout the day when they could, but that day, June 20, Carla didn’t hear from her husband.
It was 4:30 in the afternoon when Carla received a call from Eugene’s supervisor. He had passed out and she needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
“It wasn’t confusing. I knew it had to have been the heat,” Carla said. According to what Eugene’s then-supervisor told Carla, her husband collapsed in a neighbor’s front yard while delivering mail. The neighbor tried to administer CPR before paramedics arrived to rush him to the hospital, according to Carla’s recollection of events relayed to her.
And then the hospital’s chaplain called.
“I just fell on the floor. I just fell on the floor screaming and hollering,” Carla recalled when she arrived at her husband’s bedside in the hospital. “The last time I saw my husband, he had a tube down his throat. That was the last time I saw him.”
Eugene’s final autopsy report is still pending, meaning the official cause of death is unconfirmed, but Carla told…
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