HATTIESBURG, MISS. — The family of a 16-year-old worker, Duvan Perez, recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit at the Forrest County Circuit Court in Mississippi against Mar-Jac Poultry LLC, his former employer.

Perez suffered a fatal injury on July 14, 2023, after being pulled into a machine at the company’s Hattiesburg, Miss., plant.

A January report by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigators stated that Perez was a contract worker employed by Onin Staffing LLC. The report stated that workers were performing a deep clean of the deboning area on a still-energized machine when they were caught in the rotating shaft and sprockets and pulled in.

The agency cited Mar-Jac with 14 serious violations for having the teenager working in the plant. OSHA also proposed $212,646 in penalties.

Onin Staffing was also named in the lawsuit.

Mar-Jac previously stated that Perez was hired without the company’s knowledge by Onin.

“Mar-Jac MS would never knowingly put any employee, and certainly not a minor, in harm’s way, but it appears, at this point in the investigation, that this individual’s age and identity were misrepresented on the paperwork,” Mar-Jac told MEAT+POULTRY at the time of OSHA’s investigation.

in May 2021, OSHA cited Mar-Jac for a separate incident that resulted in an employee’s death.