By AP/KWMU
Clinton, MO. – The body of a man who was crushed beneath the rubble when a building collapsed last night in Clinton, Missouri was recovered from the building this afternoon.
Tony Komer, 32, the head of the Elks Club meeting at the building, was the only fatality of the collapse.
Workers had slowly worked to take down the building today before removing Komer's body.
Clinton Assistant Police Chief Sonny Lynch, says hundreds of citizens came out in the middle of the night to help rescue the nine others trapped inside the building.
"They got lumber from the lumber yard which opened it's doors and loaded big trucks and they took them up to the square and unloaded them and then they begin fabricating these devices that were needed to shore up the building so that the rescue could start," Lynch said.
Don Eaton, one of nine men trapped, says many more people would have been on the third floor of the building, where Komer was, if the building had stood for another half hour.
The reason for the collapse is not known.