26-Year-Old Newlywed’s Final Hours Revealed After Ho-rrific Woodchipper De-ath Leaves Family Devastated
A broken‑hearted South Australian father has told 7NEWS he found his son dead inside a commercial woodchipper after he failed to return home from work — a tragedy now under formal investigation.
Twenty‑six‑year‑old Josh Thomson‑Parkin was killed on Tuesday at Charleston in the Adelaide Hills.
His wife, Mekayla, raised the alarm at 4.30am on Wednesday, when he hadn’t come home.
The couple had only been married for a few months, having tied the knot in April.
Max Parkin, Josh’s father, said he immediately feared something was wrong and went to look for him.
“I found him in that machine,” he told 7NEWS.
Max says the machine had been giving Josh trouble the day before.
“He was having a chat on the couch with me Monday night about the machine that he died in,” he said.
“It was giving him a hard time all that day. It was doing his head in.”
He believes the machine became clogged while Josh was working alone.
“It got clogged up and he was in the barrel cleaning it out and the barrel’s fallen on him … crushed him,” Max said.
Josh’s devastated parents say they understand he was at the worksite by himself and are demanding answers from his employer, Mechanical Vegetation Solutions.
“I don’t understand, his boss should have found him, not me,” Max said.
“Why were there no workers there to make sure he finished work.”
The company told 7NEWS it had no comment while a SafeWork SA investigation is underway.
Josh’s mother, Tanya, described him as the son every parent hopes for.
“The best son you could ever ask for,” she said.
“When he was little … I always used to say, if you could pick your kid, you couldn’t have picked a better one.”
A SafeWork SA investigation continues into Josh’s death.
