Construction Company Owner Sentenced to 45 Days for Fatal Trench Collapse

The owner of a Seattle construction company is facing jail time in what the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries calls a milestone case holding an employer criminally responsible for a preventable workplace death. Phillip Numrich, owner of Alki Construction, was sentenced Friday to 45 days in jail for his role in the 2016 trench collapse death of 36-year-old Harold Felton. The criminal case followed an L&I investigation that found Alki Construction knowingly ignored basic, commonsense safety rules in place since the 1970s. If followed, those practices could have prevented ...