According to the accident investigation conducted by Oregon OSHA, Elwell went inside the vertical storage carousel to fix a stuck roller, when another employee operated the device to move the interior mechanism for Elwell to try and identify the problem, when the device's internal mechanism moved in the wrong direction, rotating Elwell around the interior of the machine. The other technician hit the emergency stop button, but by that point Elwell was stuck, and told the other technician "I'm going to die." He was reportedly inside the machine for 16 minutes before Intel's emergency responders were able to free him from the machine. By that time, Elwell had died from compression asphyxia.