The family and friends of Baltimore City sanitation worker Ronald Silver II will have to wait another month to learn whether or not the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health will issue citations for Silver’s death last August.
In a statement to WYPR News, Department of Labor spokesperson Dinah Winnick confirmed that the MOSH investigation into Silver’s death would continue until March 7th. This comes after months of insisting from the Maryland DOL that citations are due within six months of the incident.
“The extension ensures that all relevant information is gathered and considered in the investigation,” Winnick wrote in an email when asked by WYPR about what reasons the deadline was extended and by whom that decision was made.
On August 2nd, Silver died after he completed his work collecting the city’s trash for the Baltimore City Department of Public Works. Before doing so, he begged a neighbor for water. The city was under a Code Red Heat Alert that day.
“We were hoping [the investigation] was going to be completed last week or earlier this week,” said Patrick Moran, president of AFSCME Maryland Council 3, the union that represents most of Baltimore’s sanitation laborers. But Moran was unsurprised that MOSH needs more time to work on its investigation; he says that state government has been “hollowed out” and MOSH likely is short staffed.
Still, Moran hopes there are no further delays. “We need to come to closure here on the behalf of his family and other families that have been affected by this.”
Speaking through their lawyer Thiru Vignarajah, Silver's family offered similar expressions of patience for a thorough investigation and called for the release of the report "as soon as humanly possible."
"... with each passing month you are asking a family that has endured the unimaginable to suffer in the dark, to struggle with the unknown," Vignarajah wrote on behalf of Silver's family.
Days after Silver died, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled his death as hyperthermia — colloquially called “heat sickness”.
Silver’s death sparked outcry from unions and even elected city council members like Antonio Glover, a former DPW worker, who decried a “toxic” culture of bullying and harassment within the DPW.
In response, Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration hired employment law firm Conn Maciel Carey to do an outside investigation into the department’s safety practices. In a 62-page report that firm outlined multiple findings including that at the time of Silver’s death the department had no comprehensive heat safety plan or heat safety training for sanitation workers.
Silver is not the only DPW worker to die on the job in 2024. In November, Timothy Cartwell was killed after a garbage truck pinned him to a wooden pole while he was working in an alley off Baker Street in West Baltimore. His death is still under investigation by MOSH. Both Silver’s and Cartwell’s deaths remain under investigation by the Baltimore Police Department.
Baltimore City Inspector General Isabel Cumming confirmed her office has an ongoing investigation into the conditions and practices at the Department of Public Works.
