Miner killed at Lake Shore’s Timmins West mine

Lake Shore Gold’s (LSG-T, LSG-X) share price continued to slide following the death of a miner at its newly producing Timmins West gold mine in Ontario on April 2.

Twenty-six-year-old Trevor King was fatally injured while working in a development heading underground at the mine. He was struck by a piece of rock while loading a development round on the mine’s 730-metre level, the company’s senior vice-president of operations, Dan Gagnon, explained in a statement.

William Lin, a spokesperson with the Ministry of Labour, told local media that he was brought to surface and taken to the hospital.

King, a native of Larder Lake, Ont., was with the company for more than a year.

“This is a tragic event and loss,” Lake Shore’s president and CEO Tony Makuch said in a statement, offering his condolences to King’s family, friends and co-workers.

The junior says it will not disclose further details while the accident is investigated by the Ministry of Labour, the Timmins Police and the company’s Health and Safety committee. Following the incident, the company provided support to King’s family and counselling to its employees.

In a brief interview, Makuch told The Northern Miner that workers returned on April 4 to reflect on the accident from a safety perspective. “It’s a small family. He was one of our own,” Makuch says of King. He added production would resume the next day.

This is the first fatality for the company, which also operates the Bell Creek gold mine in Timmins.

King’s death marks the sixth mining fatality in Ontario’s northeast in the past two years, and the eleventh in the past five years for the province, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports.

Lake Shore began commercial production at the Timmins West mine, which includes the Timmins and Thunder Creek deposits, last January.

Since news of the death, the company’s shares have slid over 18%, reversing the 12% gain it made on the recent reserves update for the Timmins West mine.

Reserves at the Timmins West mine stand at 823,848 oz. from 4.9 million tonnes grading 5.21 grams gold per tonne.

Lake Shore touched a new 52-week low of 93¢ on April 4 before closing the day at 97¢. Its shares dipped 2¢ the next day on the company’s first-quarter financials.

For the quarter, the company sold 18,400 oz. gold at an average price of US$1,690 per oz., compared with 33,954 oz. sold at US$1,387 per oz. a year ago.

Lake Shore produced 16, 680 oz. gold from 160,500 tonnes grading 3.40 grams gold for the quarter, down from 22,328 oz. from 148,400 oz. at 4.89 grams a year ago.

The company points out that the gold poured during the period exceeds guidance of 15,000 oz.

The company has reiterated this year’s forcasted 85,000 oz. and 100,000 oz. gold production at US$825 to US$875 per oz. cash costs.