A father who went looking for his son after he did not return home from work was met with an unimaginable scene at an Adelaide Hills worksite. <\/p>\n
South Australian worker Josh Thomson-Parkin, 26, was found dead at a worksite in the Adelaide Hills after he failed to return home, sparking a SafeWork SA investigation.<\/p>\n
The tragedy happened at Charleston on Tuesday, where Josh is understood to have been working with a commercial woodchipper. <\/p>\n
When he still had not come home by 4.30am on Wednesday, his wife Mekayla raised the alarm. The couple had married only months earlier, in April.<\/p>\n
Speaking to 7News, his father Max Parkin said he quickly sensed something was wrong and went searching for his son himself. <\/p>\n
\u201cI found him in that machine,\u201d Mr Parkin said through tears.<\/p>\n
Mr Parkin said Josh had spoken the night before about problems with the woodchipper, describing a machine that had been causing him grief throughout the day. <\/p>\n
According to his father, Josh had been frustrated by the repeated trouble and was trying to deal with it while on the job.<\/p>\n
The family believes the machine became blocked while Josh was working alone. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt got clogged up and he was in the barrel cleaning it out and the barrel\u2019s fallen on him \u2026 crushed him,\u201d Mr Parkin said.<\/p>\n
Josh\u2019s parents are now demanding answers about why he appears to have been alone at the site and why nobody from his workplace realised he was missing. <\/p>\n
Mr Parkin said he could not understand why he, rather than Josh\u2019s employer, was the one who found him. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhy were there no workers there to make sure he finished work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mechanical Vegetation Solutions has not commented publicly on the circumstances, stating only that it would not respond while the SafeWork SA investigation is underway.<\/p>\n
As the investigation continues, Josh\u2019s family is remembering a young man they say was deeply loved and impossible not to be proud of. His mother, Tanya, described him as \u201cThe best son you could ever ask for\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he was little \u2026 I always used to say, if you could pick your kid, you couldn\u2019t have picked a better one,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n