OSHA closes case in fatal Colonie accident

COLONIE – The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ruled that it has no jurisdiction to investigate a fatal accident at a landscaping business last month because the man killed did not work there.

An OSHA spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the federal case in the death at TNT Landscaping, Excavation & Blacktopping, located at 117 Morris Road, was closed in early May with no action being taken.

The agency's inquiry "determined there was no employer/employee relationship," the spokesman wrote in an email to the Times Union.

OSHA's determination corresponds with what TNT owner Timothy Anatriello Sr. previously told the Times Union: Anatriello was allowing the victim, Mark Vaillancourt, to do freelance work at his facility when a huge piece of equipment shifted and crushed him.

Colonie police also closed the case, saying the incident was an accident. Police said Vaillancourt was working alone on the morning of Saturday, April 7, outside TNT's office when a detached flatbed held up by a front loader and a bulldozer shifted while Vaillancourt was underneath. Vaillancourt, a 60-year-old Town of Day resident, had been working full-time at DeJana Truck and Equipment.

"He wasn't even working on my thing, he was working on somebody else's," Anatriello previously told the Times Union. "I was a good samaritan, and let someone use my equipment and my machine to do a job. He set a chain the wrong way and he got killed."

A Times Union report last month noted that Anatriello has been cited repeatedly over almost a decade for junk vehicles and improperly stored debris at the property he owns across the street.

Anatriello has said one site has nothing to do with the other.