Family, friends, business mourn Park Tower tragedy

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Pictured: Carter Stanley, owner and manager of Parks Tower Apartment

LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) - The mourning for Parks Tower Apartment worker Jose Aguirre continued Monday after his death last Thursday.

Authorities say Aguirre died while working in the transformer room on the ninth floor. They say he came in contact with the transformer and was electrocuted.

Fire and EMS personnel responded and attempted to revive Aguirre while extracting him from the ninth floor, eventually transporting him to UMC where he was pronounced dead.

Carter Stanley, owner and manager of Parks Tower Apartment, said he's never experience something so horrible.

"When the incident occurred, it was very traumatic, and an experience that I've never had to endure in the past," Stanley said. "I've been in this business for 50 years and have never had to attempt to revive and resuscitate somebody."

Family and friends of Aguirre held a rosary Monday evening at Guajardo Funeral Chapels. The funeral mass will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church.

Stanley said he remembers the moment they discovered Aguirre after the accident.

"When I was called by one of the tenants that had discovered Joe up on the ninth floor," he said, "I was up there in about 30 seconds, saying that there was somebody who's in big trouble. I, along with one of the other staff members here, attempted to try and resuscitate him. It was a hard day for everybody. I mean, we literally took the day off and closed the doors and everybody went home."

Lubbock Fire and Rescue conducted an investigation after Aguirre's death. On Monday, they said their investigation has ended, and they concluded that Aguirre and another man were running Ethernet cables from the ninth floor of the apartment building to the tenth. During that process is when he grabbed the high voltage wires that killed him.

Stanley said he is going over all of the building's safety measures to make sure something like this doesn't happen in the future.

"We're already well underway and reviewing all of our safety issues and our maintenance issues and how we're going to be treating specifically those areas, as well as other areas, so we don't have any incident like this in the future," he said.

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration, or OSHA, confirmed that they have begun their own investigation into what happened, but could not go into further detail.