UPDATE April 3, 1:07 p.m. | Police said preliminary investigation revealed the construction worker died by suicide.
PREVIOUS | Investigators are trying to learn what happened after a construction worker fell to his death Thursday at a downtown convention center hotel site in Kansas City, Missouri.
Emergency crews were called shortly after 10 a.m. to the Loews Kansas City Hotel construction site at 15th Street and Baltimore Avenue.
A Kansas City Fire Department spokesperson said a worker fell 18 floors. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
"All we know is that the crew he was working on was working on the eighth floor," J.E. Dunn Midest region president Paul Neidlein said. "We don’t know exactly how or why he went up to the higher floors yet."
The worker, who was doing drywall, was employed by a subcontractor on the project.
"We’re really concerned mostly for his family and the people that he worked with on his crew, as well as everybody on this job site" Neidlein said. "It impacts all of us greatly."
The construction site remains shutdown pending an investigation from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which along with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department is looking into the death.
A search of safety records for JE Dunn Construction, which operates 22 facilities in more than 10 states, uncovered only four violations during the past ten years.
While OSHA doesn’t detail the violations, online records show the company has been fined roughly $76,000 for the violations — none of the violations stem from the company’s Kansas City headquarters.
