Hopkins pole death: Xcel still investigating 12 weeks later

HOPKINS, Minn. (FOX 9) - Nearly three months later, Xcel Energy still has not determined what caused a utility pole to fall onto a car, killing a 31-year-old man.

What Xcel has said so far

What we know:

Sunday will mark 12 weeks since the utility pole fell onto Kenny Green’s car in Hopkins and killed him. Xcel has told FOX 9 that inspectors last checked the 29-year-old pole in 2023 and found it had 93% strength.

Xcel also said it never received any calls about that pole or any others in the area. Since August, the company has told FOX 9 only that what happened is still under investigation, and when FOX 9 asked when that review would wrap up, the utility company did not have an answer.

Expert said incident was 'extremely uncommon'

What they're saying:

In an interview on Aug. 28, less than a week after the incident, Pedram Mortazavi, a structural engineer at the University of Minnesota, said the pole failure was unusual.

"Extremely uncommon, and it’s one of the first times I have experienced or heard [of] something like this happening," he said. "Sometimes, the soil around the base of it, due to different reasons, could lose its pressure, and then it’s easier for the structure to get tilted and eventually topple over."

Minneapolis attorney Joshua Newville said he wrote a letter to the Public Utilities Commission to try to get answers. The agency told him it does not investigate deadly accidents, and Hopkins police are not involved because there was no crime.

Why the review remains limited

Xcel is the only entity investigating what went wrong. Newville has said that setup is a problem and that someone needs to examine whether this could happen again.

Big picture view:

"Utility poles don’t just fall over and kill young fathers on random days of the week. Like that – that’s absurd," said Newville in an interview in September. "We can’t honestly believe that Xcel is going to just, out of the goodness of its heart, regulate itself."

The Source: FOX 9's Mike Manzoni reporting, Xcel Energy statements and interviews with Pedram Mortazavi and Joshua Newville.