Duncan Gordon Missing – 20 year old Duncan Gordon, from South Carolina who had been reported missing for two months, was discovered dead under a machine at his workplace. The police said Gordon was last seen while working at Industrial Recovery and Recycling in Greer, which is less than 60 miles from the Georgia border. Industrial Recovery & Recycling, Inc. (IRR) is a privately owned, state-of-the-art plastic recycling company that was founded, approximately 35 years ago, in 1987.
According to news release, Gordon was working on top of a plastic shredding machine when he vanished. Authorities said the machine he worked on was checked several times after Gordon went missing, including by his own father, who was a supervisor at the plant, and by sheriff’s investigators and cadaver K-9s.
Reports states that the coroner’s office and the South Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Administration became involved in the investigation in June, nearly a month after Gordon’s disappearance. The case was not considered a death investigation because there was no body found. Authorities claimed that a third search of the machine recovered material under the conveyer belt near a plastic shredding machine.
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Initially the materials tested at the scene for human blood and came back negative but after the material was hydrated during a later tests in a lab, it came as matching Gordon’s parents’ DNA. According to Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger, the machine processed around 60,000 pounds of plastic between the time Gordon was reported missing and when the first investigator arrived at the scene.
Clevenger ruled that Gordon fell inside the shredding machine, where he died. Reports states that Clevenger was not able to issue a death certificate, but said the missing person’s case is closed. OSHA is investigating whether there were any safety violations at the business.
