The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued a proposed $2,500 citation against 4-Bros Dairy in connection with a trucker who was crushed March 7 when a silage stack tumbled over him and his truck at the facility northwest of Shoshone.

"Employees were exposed to potential engulfment and crushing hazards," said David Kearns, OSHA assistant area director, who is based in Boise. "And that basically had to do with the vertical or overhanging silage face. This (citation) addressed both the truck driver's exposure as well as the farm's employees' exposure to that same potential hazard.

"They just were lucky to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.

The citation was issued Tuesday and mailed to 30-year-old Chad Charles Thompson's next of kin and to the dairy, which on Thursday had yet to receive a copy, said Andrew Fitzgerald, the dairy's secretary treasurer. Fitzgerald said the driver had been warned against parking too close to the tower of silage, which was expected to imminently fall over.

Thompson died immediately when a portion of the truck, hit by the shifting silage, struck him in the head while he was standing next to the vehicle, Lincoln County Sheriff K.C. McBride said. At about 10:15 a.m., Thompson parked the truck belonging to Hermiston, Ore.,-based Medelez Trucking Company next to a 40- to 50-foot-tall tower of silage.

A dairy "employee physically got out there and told him to move his truck right away," Fitzgerald said. "He (Thompson) went back got in his truck, sat there for a little bit, got out of the truck and started fiddling with his motor in the back."

Kearns said OSHA investigators "considered" the warning the employee issued to Thompson as a criteria in their investigation. But, he said, "it is OSHA's position that adequate steps were not taken to protect all of the workers at the site."

With some OSHA fines ranging up to $70,000, OSHA's relatively modest proposed fine doesn't assert the dairy had any willful intent to allow an unsafe work area, Kearns said.

Fitzgerald said the steep face of the silage stack was all part of a controlled procedure to make the mountain of silage fall outward.

"We were purposefully digging the material out from the side to get it to fall down," he said.

McBride had said in mid-March that his investigation was held up by a toxicology report that would be completed within four to six weeks of the autopsy, which was conducted in Boise earlier that week.

McBride, however, has issued no further statements on incident. Lincoln County Prosecutor E. Scott Paul was sick at home on Thursday and unavailable for comment, his secretary said.

Fitzgerald said beer, a meth pipe and a substance resembling methamphetamine were uncovered from inside the dead man's truck. He said he does not understand why McBride has not publicly disclosed that potential evidence.

On the day of the incident, however, he said McBride told him "even if we found the drugs in the truck we couldn't identify that they were his (Thompson's)."

The dairy owners have 15 days from the date they receive the proposed citation in the mail to either contest the citation, accept the fine, or arrange an informal meeting with OSHA to reach a settlement.