One of the six employees killed in the collapse was identified on Sunday as cargo driver Austin J. McEwen, 26. Coworkers confirmed that McEwen died while attempting to shelter in place with other employees in a bathroom.
“He was my friend and he didn’t make it,” said Brian Erdmann, another employee at the warehouse who’d been out making deliveries. “If I would have got back 45 minutes earlier, I probably would have been at the same place. I would have been right there with him.”
Coworkers described McEwen as an only child who enjoyed the music of rapper Mac Miller and liked to go hunting with friends.
Wills might have been present for the warehouse’s collapse had she not been delayed trying to help a fellow driver, who had gotten locked out of a van.
“It was chaos last night,” Wills told the Post-Dispatch. “I was frustrated with the deliveries and packages and everything. And then it got dark. And then I heard the sirens going off, and I’m like, ‘OK!’ But I keep thinking, that could have been me inside that building.”
