Man Killed By Falling Steel parts

A Carrollton iron worker was killed instantly Friday by a 300-pound bundle of steel scaffolding parts that fell from a hoisting rig to a 13th floor loading platform at the Vaughn Building remodeling project.
Police identified the worker as Charles Melvin Allen, 29, an employee of the Dallas County Rigging and Erecting Company.
Police and construction officials gave this account of  the accident.
Allen was helping to hoist scaffolding parts for a temporary elevator shaft being assembled up one side of the downtown Commerce Street office building, from a platform jutting out over the thirteenth floor. Rigging ropes unexplainable became entangled spilling the bundled 6-foot-long steel poles down the shaft.
Construction Supt. D. H. Robeson said the poles landed on Allen's head, killing him instantly.
Robeson said the pipes - which were to be fitted into the shaft as it was being built beyond the platform - fell after being lifted 84 feet over the hoisting crew.
Allen was a member of a subcontractor's crew that had started work on the project only three days ago.
nine stories are being added to the present 13-story structure.

The Dallas Morning News - July 18, 1959
Submitted by Edward Lynn Williams