A homeless Alabama man apparently trying to stay warm miraculously survived being emptied into the mouth of a garbage truck after he took an ill-timed snooze in a dumpster.
A garbage truck driver was completing his usual route through Jackson near dawn Wednesday, when he mistakenly picked up a straggler — a homeless man who had fallen asleep in a dumpster, while trying to fend off the frigid cold. Temperatures in Jackson that morning were reportedly in the low 20s.
When he woke up, the unidentified vagabond was already stuck in the truck’s compactor.
Jackson Fire Chief John Brown told WKRG that the call his crew received from the distraught driver was a first in his four-decade career.
When the truck driver pulled into a Popeyes drive-thru to grab some breakfast, he heard the man’s shrieks echoing in the compactor. By that point, the derelict man had already been compressed twice, emergency officials told the outlet.
“It’s really a fortunate thing that the gates at the Popeyes were closed and the driver had to get out. When he exited the dump truck, he could hear the man in the back needing help, and that’s when he shut everything down,” Brown said.
Mendy Boldin, a volunteer firefighter who responded to the scene, was bracing for the worst as they pried the compactor open.
But somehow he was mostly unscathed — even after being compressed twice along with the trash.
“We were all shocked because we thought, well, we’re going to have to get down there and really do some trauma assistance … to get him out, but he was fine,” Boldin told the outlet.
“That was a God thing.”
He was taken to a hospital in Mobile — roughly an hour south of Jackson — for treatment.
The homeless crisis has taken a sharp turn for the worse this month, as severe winter weather has battered much of the US.
In New York City alone, 16 people have died since Jan. 19 due to freezing temps.
