The accident that killed a Fayetteville PWC worker Tuesday morning happened when the ground collapsed beneath his excavator machine, according to state investigators.

James Willie Ivey, 40, of the 200 block of Nash Road in St. Pauls, was operating the machine along a bank of McFadyen Lake in the Waters Edge neighborhood. He had been employed by the Public Works Commission 13 years.

"It collapsed, and the vehicle slid in the water and overturned," said Neal O'Briant, a spokesman for the Department of Labor.