DPU employee dies on job
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
A 63-year-old maintenance employee at DePauw University was found dead on the job Tuesday morning, and all indications are that he died of natural causes.
A man walking past a small tractor equipped with a snow plow, stopped in front of Reese Hall in Rector Village, found David "Butch" A. Pettit unconscious at the wheel.
Operation Life was dispatched to the scene, but Pettit was pronounced dead at Putnam County Hospital, according to university spokesman Ken Owen.
He had been a groundskeeper at the university since 1989. At the time of his death, he was removing snow from the sidewalk and it appeared he had been incapacitated for some time.