#Side feeding corn silo trial#

It was July 28, 2010, and Will had started his morning at work, cleaning the grain bin with two of his buddies, Wyatt Whitebread, 14, and Alex “Paco” Pacas, 19. For miles upon miles, grain bins pockmarked the landscape, some as wide as sheds, others stadium-large.įor two hours, 20-year-old Will had been trapped in corn bin number nine, on a grain storage facility in Mount Carroll, Illinois.

He could still breathe, just barely, but his body and neck were encased in corn, and the kernels kept falling. It felt like an 80,000-pound semi-truck had parked on Will Piper’s chest. Still, too often, the memories of that day shoved their way back into his mind. Will drank himself to sleep and ceased to dream.

Six-packs of Busch Light helped block the memories. Will felt he should not have survived, and smoking weed helped numb him to his new reality. He might as well have renamed himself Grain-Bin Boy. Will felt like Mount Carroll’s version of the Bubble Boy. But rarely do we hear from survivors, the ones who have to pick up and keep living. Much has been written about the workers who have died in such accidents, including one man in Missouri this month.

#Side feeding corn silo trial#

I also attended the subsequent trial involving the grain companies and reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, transcripts, and depositions. I spent the next three years periodically interviewing Will, his parents, other victims’ families, rescue workers, and dozens of others in the town to write a story. Months after the incident, the pyramid-shaped incisions that rescue workers had carved into the side of the bins to drain the kernels of corn were still visible to anyone who passed by. Pepper, Wheat Puffs, Honey-Nut Cheerios, Log Cabin Syrup, Butterscotch Pudding Snacks, Campbell’s Chunky New England Clam Chowder, Welch’s Grape Jelly.įrom the grocery store windows, Will could see the moon-colored corn bins across the street where two of his friends’ lives had ended. Each day, Will’s hands ached as he sliced slabs of corn-fed beef and chicken while surrounded by aisles and aisles of corn-based and corn-enhanced food: Morning Star frozen breakfast sausage, frozen chicken nuggets, Sara Lee white bread, Nabisco Oreos and Fig Newtons, Ritz crackers, Dr. Will had since taken a job as a meat cutter at the local grocery store, Shaw’s. When one boy fell down a hole, Will and his best friend jumped into the funnel to try to save him. But these boys were following the grain facility manager’s orders when they went inside to break down clumps of corn. Workers are not supposed to be inside of a bin, especially without harnesses, when the sump holes are open or conveyor belts on. Once trapped in corn, the kernels lock you in like hardened cement. When turned on, a conveyor belt below carried the kernels out the hole through an auger, creating a vacuum-like pressure in the bin, forming a cone as the kernels are sucked down. The bin had three sump holes: the center, the intermediate, and the outer. I knew that Will had nearly drowned in corn a year earlier, in a grain bin accident that claimed two of his friends’ lives. I had come here to find 21-year-old Will Piper. IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER' lined the two-lane road into town. Gutted red barns, spinning windmills, horses swatting flies, and billboards with slogans like 'BEEF. Three years ago, I traveled to Mount Carroll, Illinois, a blip of a town home to 1,700, 20 miles east of the Mississippi River and Iowa border, surrounded by green, beige, and straw-colored land.