A 21-year-old man killed Saturday while cutting branches from a tree in Fairburn died of asphyxiation.
Tim June of Roswell died of “head and neck compression,” said Sgt. Anthony Bazydlo, a spokesman for the Fairburn Police Department. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office determined the cause of death Sunday, he said.
The accident occurred about 12:30 p.m. June was about 60 feet off the ground, working on a pine tree, when a branch struck him, Bazydlo said. The Fairburn Fire Department dispatched a ladder truck to the site, where firefighters worked carefully to extricate June and lower him to a waiting ambulance.
“It took some doing to bring him down,” said Bazydlo, who watched.
June’s death, said Bazydlo, confused and distressed police. At first, he said, they thought June had died from the force of the limb striking him. A physician determined otherwise.
“This,” he said, “is the definition of a tragic accident.”
June was the owner of Atlanta Tree Assurance, founded last year. Its Facebook page offers a brief but optimistic history of June’s company. It had just gotten business cards; T-shirts were on the way. One Facebook photo depicts two smiling young men wielding chainsaws. Another shows a man in a safety harness, wearing a hard hat, dangling from the leafy heights.
Teen killed in Lumpkin County wreck
A 16-year-old passenger was killed in a single-vehicle crash that injured two others in Lumpkin County on Saturday night.
Forrest Blake, 18, was driving a 2014 Ford Mustang northbound on Rail Hill Road around 7 p.m. when the vehicle left the roadway and hit a tree, the Georgia State Patrol said.
Front seat passenger Annah Robinson died, and 13-year-old Emily Robinson was flown to Grady Memorial Hospital for treatment, authorities said. Blake was transported to Northeast Georgia Medical Center. All three are from Lumpkin County.
The crash is under investigation and charges are pending, the GSP said.
Staff writer Angel K. Brooks contributed to this article.
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