There’s bad news early this week out of the coalfields of Alabama, as the Birmingham news reports:

Harold Ennis, 37, from the Nauvoo area of Walker County, died in the approximately 9:30 p.m. Friday incident, Walker County Coroner J.C. Poe said this morning.

Poe said the reports he received were that Ennis was electrocuted.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death.

Ennis was a shuttle car operator in the Drummond Mining Company’s Shoal Creek Mine, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Preliminary information indicates that he contacted an energized trailing cable, causing electrocution.

MSHA’s preliminary report says:

The electrician was performing electrical work, on the cable reel of a shuttle car, when he received fatal injuries. The electrician came in contact with the exposed 995-volt energized cable leads in the cable reel compartment. The disconnecting device was not locked and tagged out while this work was being performed.

This makes the 5th weekend in a row that a coal miner has died on the job in this country.