Port Arthur LNG scaffolding incident: 3 Houston-area men killed, identified

Port Arthur scaffolding incident kills three Houston men

Three people are dead and others were injured when scaffolding collapse at a construction site in Port Arthur. FOX 26's Leslie DelasBour spoke to an attorney who is representing one of the survivors and two of the deceased victims.

HOUSTON - Three people died and two others were injured when scaffolding gave way at the Port Arthur LNG site in Jefferson County early Tuesday morning, officials say.

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office identified those who died as 42-year-old Felix Jose Lopez, 41-year-old Reginald Magee and 25-year-old Felipe Mendez. All three were from the Houston area.

Houston attorney represents 3 families

Ryan Zehl, owner of Zehl & Associates, says he is representing two men who died and one who was injured in the incident.

What they're saying:

The attorney for the victims’ families says they woke up with their loved ones at home only to have them die hours later.

"So we are representing one of the workers who survived, Marcus Ramirez and Felix Lopez. He was tragically killed, and Felipe Mendez, he was tragically killed," said Zehl. "Felipe just had a 6-month-old daughter. He has a wife. And Felix has four children. And his oldest, his 21-year-old son, Felix Lopez Jr., was actually with him on the construction project and watched his dad fall to his death." 

Dig deeper:

Scaffolding accident kills 3 and injures 2 from Houston area 

Houston lawyer presses legal action against companies involved

What's next:

 Zehl says his job is to help get justice for the families and hold the companies accountable. 

"We’ve sued Conoco and Sempra, they are joint owners of this Port Arthur liquid natural gas project," said Zehl.  "What we have to do now is preserve the site, the integrity of the site, and keep it in the exact condition that it was in at the time of the incident."

"So what we’ve done is we’ve filed a temporary restraining order. So we have an emergency hearing tomorrow, so assuming that goes our way, the site will be totally and completely preserved so that our experts and OSHA and the government regulators can go out and look at what happened." 

Zehl says there is a lot of work to be done, but the first step is getting the site preserved so that his team can collect evidence. 

The other side:

We reached out to ConocoPhillips for comment on the pending legal action. 

"Our company practice is to not comment on pending litigation matters," said Dennis Nuss, APR, Director, Media Relations & Crisis Communications, ConocoPhillips.