Dallas USPS Worker Dies Two Years After Eugene Gates Jr. Death, OSHA Fine

UPDATE, June 25: Testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight Tuesday afternoon, Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, identified the Dallas USPS worker who died Saturday as a man named Jacob Taylor. The circumstances of the death were "still under review" at the time Renfroe spoke to Congress.
"It's of course a heartbreaking loss that serves as another jarring reminder of the on the job hazards that letter carriers face every day, such as crime, assaults, extreme heat and dealing with problems with infrastructure such as outdated vehicles," Renfroe said. The Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office said that Taylor was 51 years old and a ruling on the cause of his death is pending. “This incident remains under investigation by the Postal Service, and we do not have any comment at this time,” the USPS told the Observer.



A Dallas postal worker was pronounced dead over the weekend while working in the medical district, Kimetra Lewis, president of the Dallas branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers, told the Observer Tuesday.

While Lewis could not identify the worker, she said he had worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 28 years and fell ill on the afternoon of June 21 while working in the 2200 block of Medical District Drive. Temperatures reached the mid-90s on Saturday.

A video posted to TikTok on Saturday appears to show a significant emergency response to the scene, and a Dallas woman who claims to be a witness to the incident described seeing a man unconscious in a postal worker van.

“This man was passed out in the van … they were trying to resuscitate this man,” the woman, whose name on the app is listed as Elle, states. “It feels like 103 degrees today. Why aren’t we taking care of our postal service workers?”

Lewis confirmed that first responders attempted to give CPR at the scene, but that the worker “never woke up.” An autopsy was conducted on Tuesday, said Lewis, and the union is not yet aware of an official cause of death.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service could not be reached for immediate comment.

The fatality comes almost two years to the day after the death of Eugene Gates Jr., a Dallas postal worker who collapsed on the job on June 20, 2023. Gates’ cause of death was determined to be heat and heart disease, and OSHA fined the USPS more than $15,600 for failing to protect mail carriers from “the recognized hazard of high outdoor heat, including high temperature, high humidity and direct sun exposure.”

The incident caused U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett to push for change within the agency. In late 2023, the agency assured the congresswoman that a modernized fleet of mail carrier vehicles with air conditioning would be deployed in Texas.

“If you’re not giving them the resources to do [their job] safely, it doesn’t matter,” Elle said at the end of her TikTok video. “These are people, too.”