The contractor was killed after several metal beams came loose while being lifted from the stalled lorry this morning.

In the 11.45am incident, Choo Beng Tong, 48, was killed instantly after a one tonne beam struck him.

Southwest district police deputy chief DSP Siti Norsalawati Saad said Choo, a construction site supervisor, had gone to help free the lorry, laden with metal beams, which had one of its wheels stuck in a pothole.

Norsalawati said Choo got a backhoe to lift several beams off the lorry, ostensibly to lighten the load and free the wheel jammed in the pothole. He had stood by the lorry while this was going on.

“The ropes attached to the metal beams gave way and one of them hit his face.

“Paramedics pronounced him dead at the site,” she said in a statement today.

Choo’s body was brought to the Balik Pulau Hospital for a post-mortem.