Long-time employee found dead inside chemical storage tank at Elizabethtown manufacturing plant

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A man was found dead in a chemical storage tank Tuesday afternoon at a manufacturing plant in Elizabethtown.

Elizabethtown police received a call around 4:30 p.m. that an employee from Metalsa was missing and never clocked out from their shift.

The company searched the premises for him and found the man's tools and cell phone near a chemical storage tank.

When the company drained the tank, the man's body was inside.

The man was identified by authorities Wednesday as 57-year-old Franklin Tracy Logsdon of Campbellsville.

Elizabethtown police said no foul play is suspected.

Since 2019, federal records show that Kentucky workplace safety regulators have issued 16 violations to Metalsa, including a $316,000 penalty for a June 2020 incident in which a worker was struck and killed by a falling transfer table at a company facility in Hopkinsville.

That penalty was contested and reduced to $161,000 before the case was closed in 2021.

The company agreed to pay a $6,650 penalty in connection to a worker’s death from COVID-19 at the Hardin County site in 2021, the records show. Metalsa also was fined $14,000 in 2022 after a employee there walked into the path of a moving forklift and was killed.

That case remains open.