A video camera captured the gruesome death of a Guatemalan immigrant who was sucked into a dough-mixing machine at a Brooklyn tortilla factory Monday.
Juan Baten, 22, was fatally crushed when one of his arms got caught in the waist-high tub at the Tortilleria Chinantla factory on Grand St. in Williamsburg.
"I'm still in shock," said widow Rosario Ramirez, fighting tears as she described how Baten toiled at the minimum-wage job to support their 7-month-old daughter and his four brothers in Guatemala.
A surveillance video showed Baten repeatedly reached into the machine to press the dough and speed up the mixing, cop sources said.
At one point, he reached too far down and his arm was snagged on one of the mixer's rotating blades.
The machine then pulled him inside the large vat, and the mechanical arms crushed his head and chest, sources said.
The medical examiner ruled it an accident, but the NYPD and Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating.
OSHA said it had no record of prior violations. State records show the company failed a health inspection in June but passed a followup in October.
Before Baten left for his fateful shift at the factory, he played happily with his infant daughter Daisy Stefanie at his tiny Bushwick apartment.
"She always made him happy," Ramirez, 23, said as candles burned on either side of a picture of the young family.
Baten came to America six years ago after his father was hit by a bus and killed in Cabral, Guatemala, Ramirez said.
He worked at the factory without legal documents, earning $7.25 an hour for the grueling 5 p.m.-to-2 a.m. shift.
"He worked six days a week, nine hours a day," she said. "He didn't complain. He liked his job."
Ramirez said she had asked him to find other work so he could spend more time with their daughter, but he refused, saying his bosses were nice.
"He did everything so we could have a better life," Ramirez added. She said she will bury her husband in his homeland - a cruel end to the couple's dream of moving back to Guatemala someday.
Ramirez hopes she will get some support from the company's owners, who could not be reached for comment.
"I don't know what we are going to do," she said, cradling her daughter.
Baten always called from work to check on his wife at 10 p.m., she said.
"He would call to say hi. It was normal. When I spoke to him [Sunday] it was the same," she recalled. "I didn't think about it. It was the last time I spoke to him."
She choked up. "He told me and our daughter, 'I'll see you later.'"
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/01/24/2011-01-24_worker_at_brooklyn_tortilla_factory_crushed_to_death_after_fall_into_mixing_mach.html#ixzz1CHMYmfsh
