RALEIGH, N.C. — A section of scaffolding collapsed at a high-rise construction project in downtown Raleigh, killing three people and sending another to a hospital, officials said Monday. 
Jeffrey Hammerstein, the district chief at Wake County EMS, said three people were confirmed dead in the accident at the glass-and-steel building, where movable scaffolding peeled away from the 11-story structure and fell into a parking lot below. All four were involved in the construction project, Hammerstein said.
Authorities were working to identify those who died.
State Department of Labor spokesman Neal O’Briant said Monday that his agency is investigating the cause. Officials had closed off a wide area around the scene.
A group of men in hard hats and yellow vests, some of which said Associated Scaffolding on them, were talking to an official near the edge of the police line. A woman who answered the phone at the company’s Durham headquarters declined to give her name and said the company had no comment.
According to the state Department of Labor, the construction industry accounts for the bulk of workplace fatalities in the state, with 19 deaths reported in 2014.
