“I love you… I want to go home.” The 24-year-old dad’s terrified gasp into his phone—pinned under 2,000 pounds of concrete tomb, legs crushed, air running out—as he left a final voicemail for his wife and toddler son.

He called for help first. Then her. 45 minutes of agony before rescuers arrived.

Now his widow’s exposing the funeral home’s “gross negligence”, the solo shifts he begged to stop, and the lawsuit that could change everything.

This voicemail will break you. 👉 Listen if you can handle it →

His voice cracked over the voicemail, faint and frantic under the crushing weight: “I love you… I want to go home.”

Those were the final words of 24-year-old Angel Anthony Rojas, a devoted husband and father trapped from the waist down beneath a 2,000-pound concrete burial vault at the Dallas funeral home where he worked. Pinned in agony for over 45 minutes, Rojas managed to dial for help—and then his wife—before succumbing to his injuries at a local hospital. Now, his widow, Nataly Galaviz, is speaking out in a raw display of grief and fury, accusing Restland Funeral Home of “gross negligence” for forcing her husband to handle massive vaults alone. As the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) launches a probe and the family weighs a wrongful death lawsuit, Rojas’ story has ignited outrage over workplace safety in an industry built on mourning the dead.

The nightmare unfolded on October 20, 2025, around 2 p.m. at Restland Funeral Home, Cemetery and Crematory on Greenville Avenue—a sprawling 300-acre complex in Northeast Dallas known for its manicured lawns and solemn services. Rojas, a machine operator hired just months earlier, was in the storage yard maneuvering concrete burial vaults. These heavy-duty enclosures, designed to shield caskets from soil and groundwater, can tip the scales at 1,500 to 2,500 pounds each. Rojas’ job required using a forklift to transport them to gravesites, a grueling task in the Texas heat that often left him exhausted after 12-hour shifts.

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Angel Rojas, 24, first tried calling for help as he was pinned at work — then phoned his wife for a final goodbye.Courtesy Rojas Family

What should have been routine turned deadly in an instant. Witnesses and phone records indicate the vault—stacked precariously in the yard—shifted and toppled, slamming down on Rojas with bone-crushing force. Pinned to the gravel from the waist down, his legs mangled and internal organs ravaged, Rojas fought for breath amid the dust and debris. “He was pleading for air, pleading for help,” Galaviz recounted through tears at a press conference on October 28, her voice breaking as she clutched a photo of her husband cradling their son. With superhuman effort, Rojas pulled his phone from his pocket and made two calls: the first to 911, gasping coordinates; the second to Galaviz, which rolled to voicemail as she ran errands with their toddler.

The voicemail, played publicly for the first time during the conference, lasts just 22 seconds—a lifetime of love compressed into whispers of terror. “He just wanted to be held… He was scared,” Galaviz told WFAA, replaying the clip for reporters. In it, Rojas’ labored breaths underscore his words: “Nataly… I love you. Tell Angel [their son] Daddy loves him. I want to go home.” The message, timestamped 2:17 p.m., arrived as Galaviz shopped at a nearby Walmart, oblivious to the horror until sirens wailed in the distance. “I didn’t even know what was happening until the hospital called,” she said, her hands trembling. “By then, he was gone.”

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Rojas was working at the Restland Funeral Home, Cemetery and Crematory on Oct. 20, when one of the massive concrete burial vaults he was tasked with moving to burial sites fell and pinned him to the ground from the waist down.WFAA

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Rojas took the job at the cemetery to provide for his wife and their son, Angel Noel, who turns 4 next month.Courtesy Rojas Family

Dallas Fire-Rescue arrived at 2:32 p.m., finding Rojas conscious but in critical condition, his face ashen and slick with sweat. Battalion Chief Bryan Evans described the scene as “harrowing”: the vault’s lid, a monolithic slab of reinforced concrete, had him immobilized like a vice. Firefighters deployed hydraulic spreaders—often called the “jaws of life” for car wrecks—and inflatable airbags to pry the mass aloft. It took 47 minutes of painstaking effort, with Rojas fading in and out, before they could extricate him. Paramedics loaded him onto a stretcher, his vital signs crashing en route to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital-Dallas. He was pronounced dead at 3:42 p.m., the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruling the cause as “blunt force trauma to the torso and lower extremities.”

For Galaviz, 23, the loss is a gut punch to a young family already stretched thin. Rojas and Galaviz met as teens in Dallas’ vibrant Latino community, marrying at 19 after discovering she was pregnant. Their son, Angel Noel Rojas, turned 3 last month and idolizes his father, who worked double shifts at Restland to fund a down payment on their dream home—a modest ranch-style in East Dallas with a yard for soccer games. “He was our foundation,” Galaviz told CBS Texas, scrolling through texts from the week prior: Rojas joking about “finally getting that white picket fence.” At Restland, he was more than an operator; colleagues remember him as the guy who’d linger after shifts to comfort grieving families, sharing stories of his own “little miracle” son. “Angel had this light,” a coworker told the Daily Mail anonymously. “He’d say, ‘One day, I’ll give my boy everything I didn’t have.’” Rojas grew up in a single-parent household in Oak Cliff, dropping out of high school to enlist in the Army Reserves at 18, but injuries sidelined him into civilian work.

Yet behind the smiles lurked complaints. Galaviz revealed Rojas had repeatedly flagged safety issues to supervisors: understaffed yards, faulty forklifts, and pressure to move vaults solo despite OSHA guidelines mandating spotters for loads over 1,000 pounds. “He told me he’d beg them for a partner—’Babe, it’s too heavy alone’—but they’d say, ‘Get it done,’” she recounted. On October 20, he was the only operator on duty in the yard, a cost-cutting measure Restland denies. In a statement to WFAA, the funeral home expressed “profound sadness” over the “longstanding valued employee” and pledged full cooperation with investigators. But Galaviz’s attorney, Matthew Graham of Dallas’ Graham Firm, calls it “a preventable tragedy born of greed.” At the presser, Graham brandished Rojas’ personnel file—redacted but damning—showing ignored hazard reports. “There’s no way on earth this man should have been operating that machinery alone,” he thundered. “Gross negligence doesn’t begin to cover it.”

OSHA’s involvement escalates the stakes. The federal agency, which cited the funeral industry for 15 fatalities in 2024 alone—mostly from heavy equipment mishaps—has opened a full investigation into Restland, subpoenaing maintenance logs, training records, and surveillance footage from the yard. Experts like Dr. Elena Vasquez, a Dallas-based occupational health specialist, told Fox News the case screams violations: “Burial vaults require two-person lifts or certified rigging. Solo ops? That’s a death sentence waiting.” Similar tragedies have plagued Texas’ $2 billion funeral sector, from a 2023 Houston vault collapse injuring three to a 2021 San Antonio forklift tip-over killing a groundskeeper. Unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are rallying, with organizers visiting Restland workers to document patterns of understaffing. “Angel’s not the first, but he could be the last if we fight,” SEIU rep Carlos Mendoza said.

The ripple effects hit hardest at home. Little Angel Noel, oblivious to the void, asks daily for “Papi’s truck,” clutching a toy forklift Galaviz bought to soften the blow. The family buried Rojas on October 27 at Restland—irony not lost on mourners who filled the chapel with mariachi hymns and photos of Rojas coaching youth soccer. A GoFundMe, started by Galaviz’s sister, has surged past $125,000, earmarked for the boy’s future and legal fees. “We were saving for a house full of love,” Galaviz posted on the page, alongside the voicemail transcript. “Now it’s just us, holding each other like he wanted.” Friends describe Rojas as a quiet force: grilling carnitas for block parties, teaching his son Spanish lullabies, dreaming of opening a food truck. “He lit up talking about that home,” his best friend Miguel Torres told People magazine. “Angel was building legacies, not just vaults.”

As winter looms over Dallas’ oak-draped cemeteries, Galaviz steels for battle. She’s consulting with Graham on a suit that could seek millions in damages, citing Texas’ strict liability laws for workplace deaths. “I don’t want money—I want change,” she insists. “No other wife should hear those words alone.” Public fury boils online, with #JusticeForAngel trending on X and TikTok videos of the voicemail amassing 15 million views. Restland’s Yelp page brims with boycott calls, while industry giants like SCI (Restland’s parent) watch warily—stock dipped 3% amid the scrutiny. For Galaviz, solace flickers in her son’s giggles, a echo of Rojas’ laugh. “He told me he loved me,” she whispers, replaying the message one last time. “That’s how I’ll remember him—not under that stone, but coming home.”

In the shadow of eternal rest, Angel Rojas’ brief life demands accountability. Will Restland’s vaults of silence hold, or will one family’s cry unearth the truth? The probe presses on, but for now, a widow’s voicemail echoes: Love, in the face of crushing weight, endures.