Death at a Miami-area strip club resulted from ‘willful’ safety violation, agency says

A Hialeah roofer’s “purposeful disregard” of — or “plain indifference” to — safety violations led to a roofing employee plunging to his death at Tootsie’s Cabaret, OSHA said.

Facing proposed fines of $84,379, Sealed Tight Roofing has contested the violations to an independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

OSHA made three citations made after investigating the March 1 death at 150 NW 183rd St. in Miami Gardens. The U.S. Department of Labor agency said it found that “as five employees of Sealed Tight Roofing worked to replace the roof, one fell through a section of the existing roof that collapsed as the worker was moving a debris-filled wheelbarrow.”

He was 28 years old.

Most of the proposed fine, $62,504, goes to a violation classified as “Willful-Serious” and described as “employees were exposed to a 40-foot fall hazard while working on a flat commercial roof without a means of fall protection.”

OSHA classifies safety violations as Other-Than-Serious, Repeat, Serious and Willful. To be tagged as Willful, OSHA says, the violation has to be one “in which the employer either knowingly failed to comply with a legal requirement (purposeful disregard) or acted with plain indifference to employee safety.”

A check of OSHA’s online records says this is the first investigation of Sealed Tight which also does business as Oceans Roofing and Waterproofing. Company president Andy Garcia registered Sealed Tight with the state of Florida in July 2019 and got his contractor’s license the following month. State records say Sealed Tight is run out of houses in Hialeah and Palm Springs North.

The person answering Sealed Tight’s phone number told a Miami Herald reporter to “call my lawyer,” then hung up. A follow-up email to Sealed Tight wasn’t answered.

“Despite the well-known risks of serious and fatal injuries when working at heights without fall protection, Sealed Tight Roofing failed in their obligation to protect their workers’ safety,” OSHA Area Office Director Condell Eastmond said. “That failure cost this young worker his life.”

To report potential workplace safety violations after trying to address them with your employer, either go online or call 800-321-6742 (OSHA).