Gary Hibbs Sr., a 50-year-old Independence, Missouri man, died in May, more than a month after a forklift flipped over and pinned him for over 15 minutes while he was moving industrial cooling equipment. His lower leg was crushed so badly it required amputation. Danielle said his major organs shut down. His family says they still have no closure, and they want to know who is responsible.
The accident happened on April 16, according to FOX4 Kansas City, which reported that Hibbs’s son called his mother, Terri Hibbs, around 10:15 a.m. to say his father was being rushed to the hospital after the forklift tipped onto him. Hibbs was airlifted out, his leg crushed beneath the machine. His son said his father was being pushed “underneath the rug with no answers.”
The equipment Hibbs was moving that day was headed, according to a shipping label cited by the station’s report, to SPX Cooling Technologies in Olathe, Kansas. The same day, the Hibbs family visited Huddleston Machinery Moving in Independence and found a large radiator, a wooden crate, and green rubber bands left on the ground — physical remnants of the accident that upended their lives.
A Painful Irony the Family Can’t Shake
Terri Hibbs told the outlet that her husband had signed petitions opposing a data center proposed for construction in Independence, yet he died while moving cooling equipment bound for a data center project elsewhere in the country. The radiators themselves, per Terri Hibbs, were destined for a data center outside the Kansas City area. It’s a detail the family has had to sit with in the months since his death…