Pipeline Worker Killed by Heavy Equipment

TUXEDO — A worker on a major natural gas pipeline project was crushed and killed when a piece of heavy equipment rolled over him on a steep hill, authorities and the pipeline company said.

The worker was using a device called a sideboom to lift metal pipes from a ditch when it toppled, threw him off, and tumbled over him in Harriman State Park on Saturday morning, a spokesman from Millennium Pipeline Co., Michael Armiak, said. The accident happened near the border of Rockland and Orange counties, about 30 miles north of New York City.

The sideboom rolled about 100 yards down a steep slope before stopping, the district chief of the Tuxedo Fire Department, Patrick Welsh, said.