On July 28, 2010, 14-year-old Wyatt Whitebread arrived to work at the Haasbach LLC grain silo in Mount Carroll, Illinois, in 91-degree heat. He was accompanied by 19-year-old Alex Pacas and 20-year-old Will Piper. All three were sent inside Bin Number Nine to "walk the corn": a task that involves moving across the surface of stored grain to loosen clogs and help it flow onto a conveyor belt. The machinery was running while they worked. The facility had safety harnesses available. No one told them to use them. Sending them in under those conditions was a direct violation of federal workplace safety regulations.
At 9:45 in the morning, Whitebread began to sink. Corn acts like quicksand when the grain is flowing downward: it creates a suction force that no adult can overcome with muscle strength. Within minutes, he was pulled into a mass more than nine meters deep and disappeared. Pacas saw him going under and jumped into the same sinkhole to try to pull him out. The grain swallowed him too.
What followed lasted thirteen hours. Hundreds of neighbors kept vigil outside while rescue crews worked inside the silo in the summer heat. Piper survived buried up to his neck for six hours before being pulled out alive. He later stated that in the final moments, Pacas had prayed out loud. He said the only thing he wanted was to see his siblings graduate from high school. Whitebread and Pacas died. OSHA found twelve willful violations and fined Haasbach $555,000, an amount that was later reduced to less than half. A Carroll County jury awarded $8 million to each family.