Two men have died after falling 800 feet from Scripps Howard's KSHB-TV (NBC) Kansas City television tower near Lawrence, KS. Jerry Case, 54, of Kansas City, Missouri, and Kevin Keeling, 33, of Independence, Missouri both were employed by Structural Inspections, Inc. of Blue Springs MO. The two contractors were working on behalf of KSHB-TV installing Nextel equipment. TFM Communications actually owns the tower.
Investigators spent most of the day collecting evidence, trying to find out what caused the men working on the communications tower to fall to their death.
"I was told they had just taken down an antenna and they said that tower is about 1,000 feet," Douglas County Sheriff Ken McGovern told Fox 4 news there.
The men were installing communication equipment when the accident happened around 9:30 Tuesday morning. Investigators said the men hoisted themselves up on the tower in a bucket using a pulley system. Investigators think a cable failed causing the men and the bucket they were in to fall between 500 and 800 feet, killing the men. On the scene, the men were found still strapped into their bucket.
