Trapped inside the base of a giant smokestack, the young roofer, who had fallen 20 feet down the shaft on his first day on the job at the Pearl Brewery, desperately sought help from anyone who might hear him through the thick red brick walls.
He had removed his harness and tennis shoes, which he could have used to bang against the small black metal door that might have looked to him in the dark like a way out. The blood on the door, padlocked from the outside, would indicate that he had used his hands too.
Victor Diaz's disappearance last week, just hours after he arrived on the job site, set off an agonizing week of pavement-pounding searches by his family members, including frustrating visits to the police and to the Pearl.
Their fruitless search would end Tuesday when construction crew members noticed flies swarming and smelled decay near the smokestack, where no workers should have been. They got the key to open the 2-foot-by-3-foot door and found a man's body so badly decomposed that he remains unidentified.
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