Worker is killed at Camden factory

There was a period in Vincent Smith II's life when everyone around him expected him to die, family said.

In 1997, family members said, Smith was ejected from a car in Pennsylvania and spent a great deal of time in a coma.

"We almost lost him then," said Smith's distraught aunt, Teresa Smith, of Camden. "Now, he's gone."

In a bizarre industrial accident yesterday morning, Vincent Smith II, 29, died after falling into an 8-foot mixing vat at Cocoa Services, a Camden chocolate-making factory.

Smith was on a 9-foot-high metal platform loading chocolate bound for Hershey's candy into the vat, when he fell and was hit by the vat's "agitators," which are paddles used to break up the material as it melts at 120 degrees, said Jason Laughlin, a spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office.

Laughlin said that a coworker immediately hit an emergency shutoff switch and two others tried to pull Smith out but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Laughlin said that the exact cause of death will be determined through an autopsy, but initial reports that Smith had drowned were not true, he said.

Some workers, their clothes covered in what appeared to be chocolate, wandered around the yard about noon yesterday as investigators walked in and out of the large warehouse.

The former Campbell's Soup warehouse, on N. 36th Street, is owned by Lyons & Sons, which, according to Laughlin, manages Cocoa Services.

A woman who answered the phone at a Cocoa Services office in Moorestown, Burlington County, said that there was no comment on the incident. Laughlin said that representatives from OSHA were investigating, but their Marlton field office could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Smith's cousin, Lauren Guest, said that he was born in East Camden but spent most of his youth in Northumberland County, Pa. Smith also had three brothers and a sister, Guest said.

"We hadn't seen him in so long," she said.

"He's only been back for a few weeks. He had come back here to stay with us, for good, and he was excited. He was just quiet and always smiled."

Guest said that Lyons & Sons told they family that they can come inside the warehouse to see where Smith worked once the investigation is complete. *