A man thrown on Friday into a Dumpster truck collecting refuse from a bin where he had been sleeping is recovering from serious injuries, authorities in Portland, Ore., said.
Liam O’Grady, 27, screamed when the recycling truck driver turned on the compactor. The driver heard him and turned off the compactor, ran to a store for help and then returned, jumping in the vehicle’s hopper to hold O’Grady’s hand, media reports said.
"We open the lid and look in the container and, of course, it's quite a shock if you find somebody sleeping in it," David McMahon, the co-owner of Cloudburst Recycling, told The Associated Press. "In this case, the person had apparently burrowed under the cardboard to stay warm or dry.”
It was a difficult rescue for firefighters, who combed through piles of cardboard to reach O’Grady, Tommy Schroeder, Portland Fire & Rescue spokesman told The Oregonian.
Authorities weren’t clear why O’Grady was in the dumpster. It wasn’t the first time a man in Portland has been thrown into a trash truck from a recycling bin: A 27-year-old man found last year suffered minor injuries, the AP reported.
