Teenage Trash Worker Crushed To Death While Loading Garbage Truck

A young trash worker was crushed to death when the truck he was loading it with recycling material had its hydraulic compactor activated, trapping him inside.

Police said 18-year-old Louis Camarillo was working at a recycling plant putting paper into a truck. As the trash worker was loading the truck, the compactor somehow came down on his chest and crushed him. The Bronx resident was rushed to Long Island College Hospital where he died.

The accident happened at about 10:30 am at a recycling plant near the Manhattan Bridge overpass in Brooklyn. Witnesses said the trash worker was crushed by the truck’s hydraulics system.

“The guy got squashed between the pay loader and the truck,” Tony Lima, a nearby worker, told the New York Post.

Police said they are looking for more details about the deadly accident and found that the garbage trucked that crushed the trash worker is privately owned. Robert Stewarts, an OSHA compliance officer, was looking into whether any health or safety standards were violated. Stewarts was also looking over surveillance footage of the facility.

Both police and OSHA workers investigating the scene say they believe it was just an accident and no charges will be filed.

This is not the first case of a garbage truck mishap. Last August, a drunk man who passed out inside a dumpster was collected into a garbage truck and crushed. The drunk man’s screaming alerted the truck’s driver, who was able to call paramedics and rescue the man before he could be killed.

The family of the trash worker crushed to death in Brooklyn said the job was helping him stay out of trouble.

“His mother is devastated,” said Lucero Ariza, Camarillo’s 22-year-old cousin. “The pain of a mother has no words. That was her only son.”

The teenage trash worker crushed in the accident had only been working there for three weeks, his family said.