The Santa Clara County Coroner on Wednesday identified the tree trimmer killed when a California live oak fell on top of him in Los Gatos as Francisco Javier Meza-Diaz of Gilroy.
The 61-year-old man was killed Monday just before 1 p.m. when he was cutting a tree at 16860 Quarry Road in a rural section of town. He was with a 23-year-old man, who was taken to Valley Medical Center with undisclosed injuries.
In a brief phone interview Wednesday, property owner Tom Grammer told NBC Bay Area that the death was an "accident," and that he was helping the family prepare for a funeral. He declined to say more.
Patricia Ortiz, a spokeswoman for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, said investigators are looking into what happened. OSHA has up to six months to complete an investgation.
Neighbor Marguerite Garth told NBC Bay Area on Wednesday that Grammer had left a note on her house Monday morning, asking her to sell her a slice of land for about $10,000. She said he had been asking her for a while, but she wasn't interested.
Grammer had bought the property about two years ago, and a fire destroyed the home there in March 2011. According to building records, Grammer had applied to demolish the home last year, and rebuild a new home in March. In 2010, the town issued a stop work order on Grammer's request to do some plumbing and grading in the creek. That matter was not resolved, according to records.
The tree in question was not near the creek, but closer to Quarry Road.
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Fred Bear, who has lived on the street for 49 years, told NBC Bay Area in an earlier interview that Grammer told him that he was planning to install natural gas and sewer lines on the rural property.
"Cutting down trees can be very dangerous work," Bear said. "I don't know how much experience they had."
Contact Lisa Fernandez at lisa.fernandez@nbcuni.com or 408-432-4758. Follow her at Twitter.com/ljfernandez.
