How a 'Beast Games' crew member was nearly crushed on set: 'I don't want to die'

Sam had been on the set of "Beast Games" for only a few hours when disaster struck.

It was his first day as a freelance crew member on the Toronto set of the new game show from the YouTuber MrBeast. He was helping break down the set labeled Beast City — a miniature town with a basketball court, tables, cabins, and a tower on the northern side.

He weaved in and out of the set props while wrapping up cables. At one point, he walked into a section of the tower — a giant rectangular four-story structure that looked like it was made of concrete.

When he exited the tower, he collapsed and hit his head. He couldn't move his arm and felt a searing pain in his shoulder.

He started coughing up blood. "I don't want to die," a witness recalled him saying.

Sam didn't know it at the time, but workers had been disassembling the tower above him, and a dislodged section had fallen and sliced his left shoulder. He spent eight days in the hospital, where doctors removed his spleen and performed reconstructive surgery on his shoulder. He suffered a lung contusion, a hemothorax, and damage to his ribs, scapula, spine, and clavicle, medical records show. He said that it took months of physical therapy to regain use of his arm and that his surgeon said he couldn't return to work until spring at the earliest.

An executive producer visited him in the hospital and provided an envelope containing DoorDash and Uber gift cards totaling roughly $1,000, he said. A person close to the production said that it was something he'd asked for and that he was repeatedly offered other forms of support. Sam said he didn't remember asking for the gift cards and was underwhelmed. "Accidents on sets happen, but this one seemed preventable," he told Business Insider in an interview. He requested Business Insider use only his first name to protect his identity, which is known to BI.

"If it was really well organized or well communicated, this wouldn't happen in the first place," he said. He said he wanted MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, to publicly acknowledge the incident and ensure something like it wouldn't happen again.

In early August, The New York Times reported claims from over a dozen anonymous contestants of inadequate living conditions and safety issues during the shooting of a promotional video in Las Vegas. Five contestants filed paperwork in September seeking class-action status against Donaldson and the production companies behind the show, accusing them of "dangerous circumstances and conditions" on the Las Vegas set. According to a summary online, the case status is pending, with the next hearing set for March.

Some crew members told Rolling Stone that on-set conditions in Toronto had improved, but that the work environment was "loose" with safety.

After BI contacted the YouTuber's team for comment on this story, Sam said a representative from production contacted him, saying they were "here to support me and provided me some things I can't share." He declined to share further details.

A 'bloody' scene on set

"Beast Games" is a 10-episode reality series hosted and executive-produced by Donaldson. It was filmed from late August to September in a closed airplane construction facility and the company Blink49 ran production. The show involved 1,000 contestants competing in outlandish and risky challenges to win a $5 million prize. Its episodes were released on Amazon Prime Video from December through February, and Amazon has said it was the second-most-viewed original series of 2024. A representative from Amazon MGM Studios declined to comment on this story. Blink49 did not respond to requests for comment.

Sam's first and last day of work on "Beast Games" was September 11. BI pieced together what happened that day based on interviews with Sam, 24, and two other "Beast Games" crew members who witnessed or were aware of the incident, along with medical records, emails, and other documents.

The tower on set was covered in roughly 8-by-8-foot wood squares made to look like concrete, a supervisor who was also a "Beast Games" production assistant said. Each square was about 4 or 5 inches thick and seemed to weigh a couple hundred pounds. On the show, the tower was used for games like throwing a ball into an oversize cup on the ground floor and catching a ball that fell from holes in the ceiling. The structure appeared sturdy, surviving a record-breaking rainstorm on July 16 that flooded the set.

Around 11:30 a.m., Sam said he was untangling a "jungle of wires" in the basement section of the tower. Some of the cables were still attached to light fixtures outside the tower, so he stepped out of the west exit, he said. "There was nothing to block that off. There was no dedicated path. There was nothing to indicate that at all," he said.

At the same time, workers were attaching the squares to a boom lift, removing them from their steel frames, then lowering them to the floor, two people on-site that day said. At one point, the crew appeared to detach a section on the third floor without the boom lift attached, the supervisor said. That free square fell on Sam.

"The third-floor square had been dislodged and pushed out," said the supervisor, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of damage to his career. "I saw it come down. I knew immediately this was really bad — this was one of those moments where things change."

He said he rushed to Sam's side and "immediately radioed for a medic," describing a "bloody" scene. "I remember when I was by Sam's side looking up and seeing someone's head popping up out of the empty hole" where the square had been, he said.

A person close to the production said that Sam wasn't using the "established" path to exit the tower and that it was technically a prohibited area. Sam and the supervisor said there were no indications on the ground floor that there was work being done above them.

"I don't remember seeing any pylons, a guarded-off area, or anyone telling us that they were moving walls," Sam said. He and the supervisor said they had taken the same path underneath the boom lift multiple times since they'd started their shifts at 8 a.m. Sam said he was wearing normal gear for a construction site, including a hard hat and steel-toe boots.

An ongoing investigation

An ambulance arrived on the scene within minutes and rushed Sam to the emergency room of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, which has the largest trauma center in Canada.

The production crews halted work for the day while Ontario's labor ministry — Canada's agency that protects workers — and the police visited the site to investigate.

Sam said his family contacted multiple lawyers in September regarding any legal action they could take and were told he couldn't sue his employer because he took a payment from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, which provides insurance benefits for injured workers.

The CBC reported three months later, in December, that the Ontario labor ministry was investigating an "industrial accident" in which a crew member "was injured by falling wood on September 11 on the set."

Sam said his last contact with the labor agency was in January. A spokesperson for the ministry told BI that it was notified of an incident on September 11 in North York in which a worker suffered injuries caused by a piece of falling wood and that it issued a "requirement" to the production companies not to disturb the site of the incident. The spokesperson said the agency would not provide further information because the investigation was ongoing.

Sam said he was worried about his job prospects. He had wanted to be a part of the film industry since he was 10 and first saw "Terminator 2" and "Indiana Jones." But his injury has made him scared to go back to a set.

Sam told BI that more than anything, he wanted his incident publicly acknowledged and thoroughly investigated.

"I still can't use my left arm like I was able to," Sam said. "At the moment, I can only lift maybe 2 pounds with it. I'm working with physio to hopefully get it back to normal. I lost my spleen, so I'm also immunocompromised."

He told BI that seeing MrBeast take accountability, in particular, would mean a lot. He said Donaldson isn't the "company or people that rigged the wall," but he's the "face and the captain of the team."