Queensland Man Killed After Falling into a Woodchipper

There are a lot of ways to die. Some ways to die—like going off into the good night while sleeping—are peaceful and relatively ideal. But other ways—like falling into a wood chipper—are just the opposite. And awfully, tragically, a guy in Queensland has died after doing just that.

The accident occurred at a rural property near Gympie, about two hours north of Brisbane. Three men had been using a hired woodchipper with a 15 inch blade to help clear the driveway at about 7.40 PM on Sunday night.

According to the Gympie Times, one of the men slipped and fell in, while his two friends desperately tried to free him, but police said he went through the machine and died quickly.

Gympie police acting inspector Paul Algie described the circumstances as horrific, but unsuspicious.

"It's a horrendous thing to have to attend as a police officer—any sudden death—but these circumstances were absolutely shocking," he said.

This is not the first fatality from a commercial wood chipper. In 2014, a Florida man Hernan Gutierrez, was feeding tree limbs into a wood chipper when he was dragged in and killed. And in 2016 a guy named Justus Booze was killed on his first day working as a gardener when he was dragged into a machine on the front yard of a home in Guilderland, upstate New York.

Research by the Australian Centre for Agricultural Health and Safety found that farm deaths in 2016 were more than double that of mining or construction.