A man is dead after he was pulled Wednesday from the trash-compacting box of a garbage truck in downtown Victoria.
“So far it looks just like a tragic accident,” said Victoria police spokesman Bowen Osoko.
The man was discovered by the garbage truck’s driver near the intersection of Johnson and Vancouver streets about 6 a.m.
A man is lifted from the trash-compacting box of a garbage truck operating near the intersection of Johnson and Vancouver Streets on Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2018. (Photograph By ALBERT RIOPEL)
Police said they are assisting the B.C. Coroners Service and don’t suspect anything criminal occurred. The identity of the man, described as middle-aged, is being withheld while family are notified.
The garbage truck, bearing the name Waste Connections of Canada, stopped in a parking lot after the driver noticed something was wrong, and was behind yellow police tape for several hours. The company did not return a call seeking comment.
Osoko said the garbage truck driver had emptied a bin into the back of his truck and while driving away with the trash compactor operating he heard something unusual, a noise or the absence of an expected noise, and stopped on Vancouver Street at a parking lot to investigate.
Upon discovering a person inside the truck’s compacting box, the driver called 911.
Al Riopel, a concrete worker at the construction project at 989 Johnson St., said he arrived for work shortly after 6 a.m. and noticed the driver of the garbage truck and two colleagues on top of the vehicle.
Moments later police arrived followed by the fire department and an ambulance, said Riopel.
He said firefighters placed a ladder against the side of the truck and went up and inside the bin and brought out a man, apparently unconscious, hanging limp and making no sound.
“They tried to resuscitate him on top of the truck and then they brought him down to the side of the truck and tried some more,” he said. “Then they put him in an ambulance and drove away.”
The man later died of his injuries at Victoria General Hospital, police said.
Langford Mayor Stew Young, founder of the Alpine Group which specializes in waste removal and recycling, said his sympathies go out to the family of the man who died and to the driver of the truck, who must feel awful.
Young, whose company has no connection to the truck involved, said he thought the driver obviously knew what to do, since he pulled over quickly upon noticing something odd, even amid all the machinery noise.
He said modern garbage trucks typically operate with a giant blade, automatic in many newer vehicles, that compacts and pushes refuse to the rear of the garbage container. Some vehicles have small video cameras mounted inside, but seeing anything on them is always difficult.
Grant McKenzie, spokesman for Our Place at 919 Pandora Ave., a nearby soup kitchen and service centre for Victoria’s vulnerable people, said outreach workers at the centre were asking after the dead man, but nobody was sure of his identity.
McKenzie said it’s unusual for an experienced street person to sleep inside a garbage bin. They are far more likely to take shelter from the wind sleeping outside and beside a bin.
He said the death points to the need for more emergency shelters in Victoria.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps called the man’s death “a truly tragic event.”
“I felt sick when I got the news,” said Helps. “On behalf of myself and council our hearts go out to the friends and family of the individual who found himself in this terrible circumstance and also to the driver.”
— With files from Bill Cleverley and The Canadian Press
