A construction worker in San Francisco died Thursday when a trench collapsed on him, burying him under several feet of dirt, fire officials said.

Emergency crews spent roughly two hours trying to rescue the worker in the area of Oak and Divisadero streets, but when they finally reached him, it was too late.

“It’s sad to say that after two hours underneath a lot of debris with no oxygen, this became a fatal incident,” San Francisco Fire Department Capt. Jonathan Baxter said.

The worker was in the trench – described as being 8 to 10 feet deep and narrow – when it collapsed, officials said.

“We initially had to get in there just with our people, with hands and buckets, lifting, basically pulling sand and dirt out of there,” San Francisco Fire Department Chief Jeanine Nicholson said.

A construction worker in San Francisco died Thursday when a trench collapsed on him, burying him under several feet of dirt, fire officials said. Sergio Quintana reports.

An urban search and rescue dog was brought in to help locate the worker, and a massive vacuum truck was used to help clear out pounds and pounds of dirt and debris that buried him.

After finding him, it took crews another two hours to remove his body from the trench.

According to San Francisco Public Works, the worker was part of a contracted crew that’s working on a city sewer upgrade project.

“Safety is our number one priority. We want to find out what happened, why it happened,” said Rachel Gordon with San Francisco Public Works. “We’re going to be working with the contractor. We’re going to be working with the fire department, Cal OSHA. We have street inspectors, construction inspectors all on scene to try and find out what happened.”

Mayor London Breed toured the site and said the city will do what it can for the worker’s family.

“Some of his family is here. We need to make sure they are properly notified and provided with the respect and the support that they need,” she said.

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Unfortunately, rescue crews have located the worker.
He did not survive the trench collapse. This is now a recovery operation and investigation. The SF Public Works dept says this was a contract worker involved in a city sewer upgrade project. pic.twitter.com/pr0dUsV6ny

— Sergio Quintana (@svqjournalist) September 28, 2023

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A 25-year-old man who died when a trench collapsed in San Francisco on Thursday morning was a contractor working on a sewer upgrade construction project, city officials said.

The San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office on Friday identified the worker as 25-year-old Javier Romero from Alameda County.

Romero became trapped under 8 feet of dirt when the trench collapsed in the area of Oak and Divisadero streets. The San Francisco Fire Department had initially written on social media around 10:35 a.m. Thursday about a technical rescue underway there.

First responders from multiple city agencies, as well as a search dog and trench collapse experts worked to try to rescue Romero, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

He was working on part of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Panhandle and Inner Sunset Large Sewer Rehabilitation Project to upgrade existing sewer mains and sewer laterals in the area, SFPUC officials said in a statement.

The city’s Department of Public Works was managing construction on the project and its contractor was D’Arcy & Harty Construction Inc.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health is investigating the trench collapse and the SFPUC said the city agencies involved are fully cooperating with the investigation.

“Our deepest condolences go out to the family and loved ones of this worker, and our thoughts are with everyone affected by this situation,” the SFPUC said in its statement. “We want to thank all of the crews who responded to the scene and worked swiftly and tirelessly on this incident.”

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The world of Mary Poppins was practically perfect in every way – but behind-the-scenes there have been a number of devastating tragedies.

On-screen we were transported into a magical all-singing, all-dancing world with the much-loved British nanny and a various quirky characters.

But behind the innocent adventures of the 1964 classic, the cast were enduring personal struggles and health battles.

None more so than legendary actor Dick Van Dyke, who is thankfully still going strong at the age of 97-years-old and was recently unveiled as the Gnome on The Masked Singer.

From heartache to a suicidal battle with alcohol and a heartbreaking death, here’s a look back at the tragedies that befell the Mary Poppins cast.

Dick Van Dyke – Bert

Everyone loved cheery chimney sweep Bert(Image: Rex)

Played by Van Dyke, Bert was the one-man band, chimney sweep and kite seller with a terrible Cockney accent and a massive crush on Mary.

But during their days on set, Dick was hiding a dark secret – he was in the grips of alcoholism.

He was so desperate to get sober that he entered rehab twice, and when that failed he fell into a suicidal depression.

“We moved to a neighbourhood full of young families with the same age kids and everyone drank heavily, there were big parties every night. I would go to work with terrible hangovers which if you’re dancing is really hard,” he told the Telegraph.

“I was in deep trouble, you get suicidal and think you just can’t go on. I had suicidal feelings, it was just terrible.

“But then suddenly, like a blessing, the drink started not to taste good. I would feel a little dizzy and a little nauseous and I wasn’t getting the click. Today I wouldn’t want a drink for anything.”

After finally winning his 25-year battle, he returned to screens with Diagnosis Murder in 1993.

Dick Van Dyke was unveiled as the Gnome(Image: FOX)

Dick was unmasked as the Gnome of the American version of The Masked Singer this week – after reducing judge Nicole Scherzinger to tears.

He belted out a powerful rendition of When You’re Smiling by Frank Sinatra, then treated the audience to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins.

Nicole then gushed over the Mary Poppins icon as she broke down in tears.

“It was really dark in there. I couldn’t see anything,” Dick joked when asked how he found performing in the Gnome outfit.

“I love you so much, we love you, the whole world loves you so much. It’s an honour to have you on our show.

“I can’t believe you’re here, I’m trying to like play it cool. You look so gorgeous, you look so handsome,” she said.

Julie Andrews – Mary Poppins

Julie Andrews was apparently the opposite of her goodie-goodie character(Image: Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar)

Julie played the practically perfect Mary Poppins, but it was a different story off-camera.

Karen Dotrice, who played her young charge Jane Banks, said the Oscar winner was a foul-mouthed chain smoker behind-the-scenes.

“There was swearing. Julie Andrews was smoking on set. It was a very real 1960s set, I can tell you. They were polite around minors to begin with, but that soon ended,” she told The Sun.

Julie went on to win an Academy Award for her role before being cruelly robbed of the singing voice that had made her a star in a botched operation.

In 1997, she underwent surgery to remove noncancerous nodules from her vocal chords, but when she woke up her ability to sing had gone.

“If it had happened earlier, it would have been really devastating. As it was, it was devastating,” she told People magazine. “For a while, I was in total denial… I thought at the time, my voice was what I am.”

She later sued the two doctors and her case was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2000.

Matthew Garber – Michael Banks

Matthew Garber retired from acting soon after Mary Poppins(Image: Supplied by LMK)

Brit star Matthew played Michael Banks in the 1964 film Mary Poppins – but retired from acting aged 10.

He unknowingly contracted hepatitis while in India in 1976, but by the time his dad managed to get him home in 1977, it had already spread to his pancreas.

Sadly, Matthew died from haemorrhagic necrotising pancreatitis at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London at the age of just 21.

His brother Fergus, who was 13 when Matthew died, denied claims his brother contracted hepatitis by using drugs.

He said it had probably come from eating infected meat.

David Tomlinson – George Banks

David Tomlinson, pictured as Mr Banks, suffered a devastating personal loss(Image: Getty Images)

Tragically, David was widowed aged just 26 when his wife jumped from a hotel with her two sons, just weeks after they had got married.

Mary Lindsay Hiddingh’s first husband had been killed in action, leaving her to raise her two boys, Michael, eight, and John, six, alone.

Reportedly despondent over not being able to bring her children to the UK to be with David, Mary and the children plunged 15 floors on December 2, 1943, leaving him devastated.

He later married actress Audrey Freeman in May 1953 and they stayed together for 47 years until his death from a stroke aged 83.

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A 25-year-old man who died when a trench collapsed in San Francisco on Thursday morning was a contractor working on a sewer upgrade construction project, city officials said.

The San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office on Friday identified the worker as 25-year-old Javier Romero from Alameda County.

Romero became trapped under 8 feet of dirt when the trench collapsed in the area of Oak and Divisadero streets. The San Francisco Fire Department had initially written on social media around 10:35 a.m. Thursday about a technical rescue underway there.

First responders from multiple city agencies, as well as a search dog and trench collapse experts, worked to try to rescue Romero, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

He was working on part of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Panhandle and Inner Sunset Large Sewer Rehabilitation Project to upgrade existing sewer mains and sewer laterals in the area, SFPUC officials said in a statement.

The city’s Department of Public Works was managing construction on the project and its contractor was D’Arcy & Harty Construction Inc.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health is investigating the trench collapse and the SFPUC said the city agencies involved are fully cooperating with the investigation.

“Our deepest condolences go out to the family and loved ones of this worker, and our thoughts are with everyone affected by this situation,” the SFPUC said in its statement. “We want to thank all of the crews who responded to the scene and worked swiftly and tirelessly on this incident.”

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Fourteen-year-old Alice was usually a good student, bright and popular. But her teachers at San Joaquin Memorial High School noticed her grades were dropping. She kept having to drop out of class to recover from her migraines. Alice was “very moody, very nervous and a little despondent,” one teacher told the Fresno Bee, but so were many teens. Only later, the teacher recalled with regret, did everything read like a warning sign.

At 1:45 am on March 19, 1950, Alice and her twin sister, Sally, came home from babysitting. At the six-room ranch-style home on Harvey Avenue in Fresno, silence fell as the Richard family fell asleep.

At 3 a.m. Alice got up. She searched in the dark and found the family’s bolt-action rifle and two cartridges. She padded back into the bedroom, handed the rifle to her sleeping twin, and pulled the trigger. Alice went to the nearest phone and called the police.

“Come to 4721 Harvey immediately,” she said. “There has been a murder.”

—

A twin killing its twin is so rare even today that there are only a handful of documented cases. When Alice killed Sally, the act was unknown.

The news made Alice a household name, her face gracing front pages across the country. It caused such panic that many newspapers reported on a report by a psychologist reassuring parents that their children were not murderers.

“This is an exceptional case,” wrote the doctor. “In the scientific records of twin studies, both in Europe and America, I could find no other instance of one killing the other twin.”

Sally and Alice were born in Long Beach in 1935 and were nine years old when the family moved to Fresno. From the outside, there seemed nothing particularly remarkable about the Richards. Father Edgard was a plumbing salesman and Mrs Mary was busy raising their six daughters and two sons.

Friends and family painted a tense portrait of the girls. By most accounts, Alice was the more popular and powerful sister. Her 16-year-old brother told the Fresno Bee he couldn’t imagine Alice envying Sally. “Alice looked better and I could imagine Sally being jealous of her,” he said. Sally was described as “exuberant”. “That’s why the girls didn’t invite her to parties,” the brother commented. “Since she and Alice were twins, Alice wasn’t invited either.”

Sally and Alice argued, but most shrugged – what 14-year-old siblings don’t fight every once in a while? However, at least one family member feared that the situation would escalate. Her 13-year-old brother told investigators he recently overheard the girls’ argument. “I’ll kill you,” he heard Alice shout, “and I’ll kill you with a gun.”

“I was afraid she was serious, so I got the .22,” the boy told investigators. He hid the gun under his bed.

The night Sally died, the twins were babysitting their neighbors’ two young daughters. Sally was usually alert, but this evening she seemed busy. She followed her neighbor through the house, pretending to be about to share a secret. When it came time to pay the girls, the neighbor only had a $5 bill. She joked she would have to rip it up to give half each to Alice and Sally.

“She won’t need it,” Alice replied.

When the police arrived on Harvey Avenue a few hours later, they found Alice calm amidst the chaos. When asked why she killed her twin sister, she remained calm.

“I killed her,” Alice said, “because I hated her.”

“She told me I could ask questions for the rest of my life and I would never find a reason other than the one she gave,” a sheriff’s deputy told The Bee.

When Alice was in custody, she kept up the ice-cold facade. She complained that Sally was “loud, acted like a weirdo and sang at the top of her lungs”. She said she enjoyed her stay in the juvenile detention center and slept better than she had in years. “The only thing I have to complain about here,” she boasted in her first court appearance, “is that they don’t allow us to use lipstick.”

Crowds of reporters and photographers followed her every step. Alice’s outfits, hairstyles and jokes have been breathlessly printed across the country as if she were a much older femme fatale. It was a circus.

In the rush, the sorrow of the situation was lost. A juvenile judge ordered Alice to undergo extensive psychological evaluations. Her parents agonized over her mental state and wondered if they had missed signs. Her mother told reporters she couldn’t imagine the act was premeditated; She said Alice asked earlier that evening for clean stockings to wear to church the next day – hardly the act of a girl who would murder a sibling hours later. Her father Edgard was convinced that Alice’s mental state had changed.

“I am satisfied that she is ill and unaware of the seriousness of what she has done,” he told the Bee days after the murder. Her family attorney seemed to agree. “I asked her if she knew the difference between right and wrong. She said she did it,” the attorney said. “… Almost in the same breath she will say that she was still right to kill Sally and that she would do it again.”

When the psychiatric evaluation came back, experts said Alice was in some sort of mental crisis. In a surprisingly progressive move for 1950, the judge did not allow her diagnosis to be disclosed. He felt that the only hope Alice had for getting her condition under control was to get out of the spotlight again. He decided that she would be checked every 90 days until she was well enough to be released. Alice was taken to Napa State Hospital for an indefinite stay.

“It’s bad enough losing a daughter,” her father told the media, “but in this case, I actually lost two.”

—

Although the adults in her life tried to keep her out of the public eye, Alice wasn’t done with it. In August, four months after being sent to Napa, she climbed a fence and set out in search of freedom. Almost immediately she recognized the car driving up the street – it was her mother, coming to visit. Alice ducked sideways and waited for her to come over.

A view of Market Street in San Francisco from a 35mm slide taken in the 1960s.

Meghan Bennett/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Four different cars picked up Alice on her way to San Francisco. With $3 in her pocket, she strolled down the market, saw a movie, and bought a soda and donut. But freedom wasn’t what she expected. Out of money and without a place to live, Alice went to the mission’s police station.

“I’m Alice Richard,” she announced. “I’m a runaway from the hospital in Napa. I shot my sister.”

She was brought back to Napa and was out of the limelight for the rest of her life. Eventually, Alice left the state hospital, but there were no crowds photographing her last day. Whatever happened happened quietly and quietly. There is no record of what Alice did next, but obituaries fill in the rest. She married and moved to Alaska, where she died in 2014 at the age of 78. She is buried next to her husband in the island town of Sitka off the Alaskan coast.

More than 1,500 miles away, her sister Sally rests in Fresno. Her funeral took place three days after her death; Alice decided not to go.

Schoolmates left Sally’s coffin covered with red roses and white carnations. A pastor gave her eulogy.

“We cannot fathom or understand what God had in mind when He brought such calamity upon us,” he said. “Perhaps such a great tragedy should not be understood by us.”

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OAKLAND — A San Francisco man who was killed in a drive-by shooting on Sept. 8 after attending a funeral service in Oakland was identified by police on Friday as Dominique Miles, 40.

A 22-year-old San Francisco man who was an acquaintance of Miles was also injured in the shooting and is still recovering, according to authorities.

A motive for the shooting could not be determined. There were no arrests.

The shooting happened just before 6 p.m. on September 8 on the 300 block of 27th Street, about half a block west of Broadway.

Miles and the other man had just left a wake in a hall in the area for a person they both knew had died. Miles was in a parked vehicle on the north side of the street and the other man was outside the vehicle.

A vehicle drove by and someone inside began shooting at the men. Miles was wounded multiple times and later died in a hospital. The other man was hit at least once and had to be transported to a hospital himself.

Oakland Police and CID are offering a reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to the shooter’s arrest. Anyone with information can call the police at 510-238-3821 or 510-238-7950 or Crime Stoppers at 510-777-8572.

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A man identified by police as 44-year-old Omar Pope stands near a parked car in San Francisco. (Northern California District Court Records)

SAN FRANCISCO — A townsman who lost his brother, son and wife in a series of tragic incidents has been sentenced to 41 months in prison, although he was acquitted of possession of the bullet that killed his wife in January, as of court records emerge.

The story of 44-year-old Omar Pope dates back to last year, when federal prosecutors charged him with two counts: in May 2022, being a felon and possessing a loaded gun, and in December 2021, possession of the bullet his wife killed when the couple fought over a handgun in their home.

Pope took the unusual step of pleading guilty to the May possession charge and bringing the second count to trial. Last January, a grand jury acquitted him of a felon in possession of ammunition, but Pope still faced federal prison time on the gun charge.

On Thursday, US District Judge William Alsup sentenced Pope to 41 months in federal prison, counting the time he has served in prison since his arrest in June 2022.

According to court records, Pope’s arrest was the culmination of a series of tragedies that began in mid-2020 when his brother died of COVID-19. Two months later, in August 2020, his 14-year-old son was killed after a car being driven by a relative struck a truck, court records show. Then, in December 2021, Pope’s 40-year-old wife was shot dead in a house on the 100 block of Dakota Street in San Francisco.

Pope told responding officers that his wife – still distraught over the death of their son – had repeatedly pointed the gun at herself and at Pope and threatened to kill both of them and other family members. He said when he tried to take the gun from her, they argued about it and it exploded. According to court records, she was fatally hit by a bullet and another hit Pope in the hand.

Five months later, in May 2022, Pope was caught with a gun stolen from Hayward, prosecutors said. US prosecutors pleaded for a 57-month sentence, arguing the series of tragedies in Pope’s life should have been a wake-up call and made his subsequent gun ownership even worse.

“Not a lot of criminal convictions. No significant prison sentence. Not the gunshot death of his wife. Not his own gunshot wound. Not the pain and suffering his daughter had to experience from the loss of her mother. None of this stopped Pope from possessing a stolen firearm in May 2022,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.

Pope’s attorney, Daniel Blank, argued that the tragedies were devastating for Pope, but pointed out that he claimed responsibility for the gun ownership in May 2022, months before he was tried on the other charges. Blank said in court filings that Pope felt the need to carry a gun for self-protection after surviving the harrowing experience of his wife’s death.

“It was these recent devastating losses, in addition to many previous ones, that led Mr. Pope to spiral into drug addiction and fueled a paranoia that made him feel he needed a firearm for his own protection,” Bank wrote.

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline offers free 24-hour support, information and resources. Reach Lifeline at 988 or 800-273-8255 or visit 988lifeline.org.

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Bob Lee, a tech executive who founded mobile payments company Cash App and previously worked at Square, died Tuesday after being stabbed near downtown San Francisco, according to his family and police.

The San Francisco Police Department said officers responded to a report of a stabbing around 2:35 a.m. Tuesday. Officers found Robert Lee, 43, with apparent stab wounds. He was taken to a hospital and succumbed to his injuries, police said.

Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement Wednesday night that the investigation was at an early stage and he called it a “horrific crime.”

The incident is being investigated by the police department’s homicide squad, the department said.

Lee had worked as Chief Product Officer at cryptocurrency company MobileCoin. He was previously Chief Technology Officer at Square (now known as Block), a financial technology startup co-founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Lee went on to create Cash App, a money transfer service.

“Bobby worked harder than anyone and was the smartest person I’ve ever known. He will be missed by all who knew him,” his father Richard Lee said in a Facebook post, which was accompanied by a news article about the stabbing. “Thank you to those who have reached out in support.”

The father and son have lived in Miami since October after moving from California, Richard Lee said in the Post. They had become particularly close following the death of Bob Lee’s mother in 2019. It wasn’t immediately clear why Lee was back in the Bay Area.

“I am so sad and discouraged to lose my brother,” Tim Oliver Lee wrote on Facebook. “He really was the best of us. I was very fortunate to grow up with him and I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself.”

In a statement Wednesday, Joshua Goldbard, MobileCoin’s founder and CEO, said that Bob Lee “passed away yesterday” and praised his business acumen. He did not state Lee’s cause of death.

“Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature. Bob was the real article,” Goldbard said. “He was created for the world that is being born, he was a child of dreams and whatever he imagined, no matter how crazy, he made come true.”

Goldbard said in a Twitter thread that Lee was “like a brother to me,” and he praised Lee as a “brilliant” visionary with a “kaleidoscopic” mind.

The World Health Organization confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday that Lee has offered his “support and expertise” during the pandemic, saying in a statement that “Bob built a large part of the server for the WHO Covid-19 app.”

Lee was also an investor in Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, as well as other tech companies like social audio app Clubhouse, according to his LinkedIn profile. He used the crazybob handle for his LinkedIn and Twitter pages.

Scott, the police chief, offered his condolences to Lee’s family and friends Wednesday night.

“There is no place for this type of violent crime against anyone in our city,” Scott said in the statement. “I want to assure everyone that our investigators are working tirelessly to arrest Mr. Lee and his loved ones and bring justice, just as we try to with every murder in our city.”

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The deadly stabbing could intensify investigations into public safety issues in San Francisco, where residents and business owners are increasingly concerned about violent crime and theft. Mayor London Breed has promised to tackle crime.

According to the police department, there have been 12 murders in San Francisco since the beginning of the year. In the same period last year it had 10 homicides.

Lee’s family, friends and colleagues paid tribute to him.

Krista Lee called her former husband “the most incredible and beautiful human being” and said that “he was everyone’s best friend.”

They had two children, Damien, 17, and Scout, 14. Damien Lee said his father was a down to earth person who always listened.

“He was such a special person in this world. I am so sad that he left us so soon,” Damien Lee said in a statement.

In a statement from her mother, Scout Lee said she was “devastated that anyone would be so cruel as to take my father’s life.”

“He was the best man and an even better father. If you ask anyone who knew him, they would always say he was the best and they would always tell an amazing story about their experiences with him,” she said.

“I will forever miss my father and be devastated by his death because he was not only my father but also one of my best friends,” she later said in the statement.

Former MMA fighter Jake Shields remembered him as a “loyal friend”. In response to a tweet from Shields, Musk said he was “very sorry” to learn of Lee’s death.

Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, called Lee’s death “heartbreaking” on the social media platform Nostr. “Bob was instrumental in the Square and Cash app,” wrote Dorsey.

Joshua Bloch, a friend who worked with Lee at Google in the late 2000s, remembered him as a magnetic person who “always had a huge smile on his face” and “constantly lived life to the fullest.”

In a phone interview on Wednesday, Bloch recalled that Lee was a “self-taught” tech who appeared to “could do anything he wanted,” adding, “I don’t think he realized how special he was. “

“One always says nice things about dead people,” Bloch said, “but in this case I would say exactly the same thing if he were still alive. He was remarkable.”

Daniel Arkin is a national reporter at NBC News. He specializes in popular culture and the entertainment industry, especially film and television.

Chantal Da Silva is the Breaking News Editor at NBC News Digital, based in London.

Bryan Gallion and Phil Helsel contributed.

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