An Italian man, 74-year-old Giacomo Chiapparini, has been crushed to death after a shelf of cheese wheels weighing about 40kg each broke inside his own cheese factory in Italy's Lombardy region Sunday evening (August 6).
Chiapparini had been inspecting ripening grana padano cheese wheels, a kind of hard cheese similar to the more famous parmesan, stored on metal shelves as high as 10 meters tall when one of the shelves broke, according to The Guardian.
A Cheesy Death
Firefighters responding at the scene inside the warehouse of his dairy factory in the small town of Romano di Lombardia near Bergamo told local media Monday (August 7) a shelf of cheese wheels broke, causing a domino effect that brought down thousands of wheels.
Chiapparini was buried under the weight of the cheese wheels that rescuers had to "move the cheeses and the shelves by hand," which took "12 hours" before finding Chiapparini, who died at the scene.
Local media also reported police are currently investigating the cause of the incident.
Chiapparini's company had been producing grana padano cheese since 2006.
