OSHA fine after H-E-B warehouse death puts Big Lots safety on notice

A $17,878 OSHA fine after Teresa Dominguez’s death puts a hard number on a familiar retail danger: when warehouse training slips, the consequences reach far beyond one shift. Federal regulators said H-E-B was cited for two workplace violations after the 27-year-old died on October 24, 2025, at a San Antonio warehouse on Rittiman Road.

One of those violations was described as serious and tied to reevaluating forklift training for 30 employees within the required window. That detail matters in any freight room, stockroom or distribution center, including Big Lots locations where powered equipment, tight aisles and rushed replenishment work can turn a routine delivery into a chain of risk. Some reporting said Dominguez was operating a forklift when she came to a stop and a coworker later noticed signs of distress and sought help.

OSHA opens fatality inspections in response to workplace deaths, and those reviews can lay out the events leading up to the incident and the causal factors. In warehousing, the agency says hazards are governed by general-industry standards and reinforced through enforcement initiatives. OSHA also launched a National Emphasis Program for warehousing and distribution center operations in July 2023, putting industrial vehicles, material handling and storage squarely in the agency’s sights.

For Big Lots, the warning is not abstract. Training records, forklift certifications, aisle clearance, equipment inspections and emergency response all shape whether a warehouse injury becomes an injury report or a fatality investigation. A single missed reevaluation or a supervisor who lets shortcuts become habit can leave a store scrambling through interviews, paperwork and staffing gaps while the floor still has to be worked.

Big Lots Stores, Inc. has its own OSHA history, including a 2013 citation at a West Babylon, New York store. That does not mean every location is unsafe. It does mean retailer safety problems tend to recur when leaders treat the back room like a place where standards can wait until after the next truck is unloaded.

The H-E-B case is a reminder that warehouse safety is measured in the details managers track every day and workers feel the moment something goes wrong. In retail, the difference between a normal shift and a catastrophe is often whether someone actually checked the training, the equipment and the floor before the work started.