Cops: Laundry worker crushed to death

A worker was crushed to death Saturday evening by equipment at a Bay Shore commercial laundry, Suffolk County police said.

The worker, Milton Anzora, 24, was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. at Prestige Laundry on Saxon Avenue in Bay Shore, about an hour and a half after the accident.

Anzora was killed after being crushed by an conveyer-belt-like apparatus, called a shuttle, that moves clothing between the washing and drying machines, said Det. Sgt. Thomas Groneman, a homicide-squad supervisor on the case. It's unclear why Anzora had climbed up to the shuttle.

Anzora, of Montauk Avenue in Brentwood, had worked at the laundry for five months.

Groneman said the death appeared to be an accident without criminality. An autopsy is pending, but preliminarily the cause of death appears to be blunt-force trauma, police said.

Police referred the incident to the federal workplace safety regulator, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which will conduct a parallel inquiry. Such referrals are standard practice after industrial deaths and injuries and don't necessarily indicate fault.

A message left on Prestige's answering machine Saturday night wasn't immediately returned. Prestige does large-scale laundry for big hotel chains.