Car wash employee dies after getting trapped in machinery in North Carolina, cops say

A car wash employee was killed after becoming stuck in the drive-thru machinery, according to investigators in western North Carolina.

It happened around 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 13, at ZIPS Car Wash on Gill Road in Weaverville, police officials said in a news release. Weaverville is just north of Asheville in Buncombe County.

“First responders located ... 26-year-old Carolina Franks of Buncombe County, who had apparently become entrapped in equipment located within the car wash,” Weaverville police officials said in the release.

“The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.”

Franks suffered “traumatic injury” during the incident, police said.

An investigation is being led by the N.C. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA), police said.

Franks wasn’t supposed to be working the day she died, but had agreed to fill in for another staffer who “canceled their shift at the last minute,” family members told the Asheville Citizen Times.

Details of how she got stuck were not released, but it’s not the first case of someone being killed by car wash machinery, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

In 2005, a 23-year-old car wash employee died in California “when he was pulled into a side-arm rotating brush,” investigators said.

“The hose the victim was using got caught in the side-arm brush and it pulled him into the rotating motion of the brush,” it was reported.

This story was originally published January 15, 2024 at 3:46 PM with the headline "Car wash employee dies after getting trapped in machinery in North Carolina, cops say."