Worker Killed in Fatal Fall at Gateway Tunnel Always Had Smile on Face, Says Family

The heartbroken daughter of a 52-year-old construction worker who was killed when he plunged 60 feet into a tunnel at the Gateway Project on Oct. 23 said he was the “hardest worker you would ever meet” and would “always come home with the biggest smile on his face.”

Jorge Sanchez “was a father, a husband, a friend, and even more,” said his daughter Gloria Sanchez on a GoFundMe page started by the family. “We are devastated in our hearts from this heart-aching pain that will forever live with us. He was the kindest soul you could ever meet, helped anyone and everyone, and would never hurt a soul.”

She said he was a “a family man who did anything for them. A pain will be felt without coming home to seeing a big smile on his face even after his longest day. An amazing soul taken too early off this earth.”

FDNY Battalion Chief Anthony Romano said that firefighters were on the scene within three minutes of receiving the alarm shortly before 9 a.m. on Oct. 23 and encountered the worker at the bottom of an approximately 60-foot pit. Death was apparently instantaneous. Romano said firefighters reached him and started CPR, but he had “no pulse and was not breathing.” He was transported to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital where he was pronounced deceased.

FDNY Deputy Chief Nicholas Aiello said the worker fell from a northern foundation wall that was poured on Oct. 22. “We do not how or why he fell,” Aiello said during a press briefing on Oct. 23.

Three organizations—the Gateway Development Corporation, Amtrak, and Related Companies—said work on the $16-billion project, which is building a new rail line to connect New Jersey Transit to Penn Station, has been suspended.

Sanchez emigrated to the United States from Honduras in the 1990s and became a union carpenter.

“There are no words strong enough to express the pain and sadness we all feel,” Paul Capurso, a leader at the NYC District Council of Carpenters said in a statement. “He was more than a carpenter. He was part of our family, a brother who stood shoulder to shoulder with us every day to build something bigger than ourselves.”

The family’s GoFundMe page had attracted over 225 donors who raised over $48,000 from more than 300 contributors by Oct. 31.

The Gateway project has been the subject of controversy as President Donald Trump has said he was shutting down projects that Democrats supported during the government shutdown and specifically said he was terminating funds for the Gateway Tunnel project, which was started during the Biden years. But despite that, work had been continuing until the tragic event on the morning of Oct. 23.