Customers were inside the bowling alley at the time but no one saw the accident take place, according to Fairfield police. It wasn’t until other employees paged the victim several times and didn’t get a response that they went looking for him and found him.
“He was sent back for a problem with one of the lanes. He’d been back there, they tried to call him, and when he didn’t answer the call they went back there and they found him,” said the Fairfield Police Department’s information officer, Doug Day.
A former co-worker, Nathan Hursell, said Geiger had been working in the bowling alley business for 30 years, including several years together.
“The machines are about 40-50 years old — they’re good machines but just like any running machine they’re dangerous — they got gears, pulleys, everything’s running back there,” said Hursell, the head mechanic at Madison Bowl in Oakley. “I couldn’t believe it — I was shocked, you know, tragic moment for anybody, let alone him.”
The Butler County coroner will conduct an autopsy Friday to determine an exact cause of death.
“Dave was a stand-up guy,” Hursell said.
Managers of Northwest Lanes shut down operations for Thursday night.
Hursell said safety is now on his mind.
“Any call I run on a machine now it goes through my head,” said Hursell.
“He knew exactly what he was doing back there. It’s one of those things where you don’t think twice of that happening. It’s just a common spot that we get in the machines at and it’s just a freak accident.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration sent an investigator to the scene in response to a male worker who was caught in the alley’s machinery, said Bill Wilkerson, the Cincinnati area director for the federal agency.
He said Northwest Lanes has not been previously investigated or cited, according to federal records.
“It does not appear we’ve had any inspections there,” Wilkerson said, adding that a fatal accident at a bowling alley is rare. “(A bowling alley) wouldn’t generally be an industry where we would expect a great deal of hazards.”
An autopsy will be conducted today, Day said.
The bowling center has been in operation since 1976, according to the business’ website.
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