Angry coroner’s call to grieving father called ‘unprofessional’ by attorney
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Justin Davis, a 28-year-old apprentice electrician, died while working at Calgon Carbon.
- The death was first reported as a fall, but the family’s lawyer suspects electrocution.
- Hancock County Coroner Jeff Hair called grieving family to defend Calgon, lawyer says.
The day before 28-year-old Justin Davis died at Calgon Carbon in Hancock County, he was granted full custody of his 7 year-old-daughter.
Hours after the apprentice electrician died May 12, his father was trying to figure out how to tell the little girl her dad was gone when the Hancock County coroner called. The phone was on speaker. Justin’s widow was listening, too.
Coroner Jeff Hair “almost immediately” started scolding Justin’s father Ed Davis, said the family’s attorney, Ronald “Chip” Herrington of Mobile. Herrington on Thursday described to the Sun Herald what happened.
Hair said that he had worked for 22-plus years at Calgon and the company had an impeccable safety record. The coroner scolded Davis, saying Davis should not suggest, or post on social media, that his son had been electrocuted.
“Ed Davis immediately calls me,” Herrington said. “He was very upset. He had been yelled at by the coroner within hours of finding out his son was dead.”
The coroner, Herrington said, “was adverse to them out of the box, very unprofessional. That was the reason I released that letter.”
Hair declined to comment Thursday afternoon about the phone call and death of the contract worker, who was employed by Doleac Electric Co. in Gulfport and about to graduate from his apprenticeship program, his obituary said.
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Electrician offers information
“That letter,” first reported by online publication The Mississippi Independent, created quite a stir when Herrington recently posted it on Facebook. The letter described Hair’s call to the family and questioned Hair’s ethics and impartiality.
“It seemed awfully suspicious, and it is awfully suspicious, that everybody came out defending Calgon Carbon before they knew what happened,” Herrington said.
It is true that Calgon Carbon has a good safety record, Occupational Safety and Health Administration data shows. However, Herrington has talked to an electrician who was at the plant when Justin Davis died.
By all accounts, the young man was on scaffolding 20 feet off the ground, working on a light fixture. The Hancock County Sheriff’s Office initially dispatched information that Davis had fallen from the scaffolding, Hancock County Sheriff Johnny Alison said.
Alison passed the information along to the media.
“That’s the best information that we had at that moment,” Alison told the Sun Herald on Thursday. “After checking into it, he did not fall. Apparently, he just slumped over on the scaffolding he was on.”
Herrington said he has talked to an electrician who was working that day at Calgon. The electrician climbed onto the scaffolding and checked the fixture Davis had been working on.
“It sparked,” Herrington said. “It actually generated an arc and a spark when he checked it to confirm it was hot. And it was hot even though the breaker was turned off.”
OSHA investigating death
Herrington reported this information in his letter. He was careful not to say the coroner spread word Davis had died in a fall. Instead, the letter said Herrington didn’t know whether Hair or someone else was responsible.
Emergency responders tried for 30 minutes to revive Davis while a helicopter was en route. When their efforts proved futile, they canceled the helicopter and pronounced the young father dead, a county incident report says.
Davis was about 6 feet, 8 inches tall and weighed close to 300 pounds, Herrington said. His body was lowered to the ground with rope and pulleys.
OSHA is investigating his death. A Calgon spokesman said the company is “cooperating fully” with the investigation, but declined to answer questions about what happened.
Davis was born in Biloxi. He loved to hunt, run dogs, boat and spend time outdoors. Fishing, his obituary said, was his first love. “He was known for catching fish in the most unpredictable places,” the obituary said. His family was his heart, including his wife, parents, brothers, sister, grandmother, nieces and nephews, and in-laws.
“He was as good as gold,” Herrington said. The attorney is exploring legal options, including workman’s compensation and a wrongful death case, as he awaits an autopsy report. Meanwhile, he wanted to squelch any rumors that Davis fell from the scaffolding. But, most of all, he wanted the public to know how the coroner reacted and how he treated a grieving family.
“It was a bad day,” Herrington said.
