7-Year-Old Boy Nearly Gets Crushed After Falling Into Garbage Truck

A 7-year-old Florida boy, who accidentally landed inside a garbage vehicle while hiding in a trash can, had a miraculous escape, thanks to the alert driver who turned off the truck's blades in the nick of time.

Elias Quezada was playing outside his grandmother's home at Neving Avenue in North Tampa last Tuesday when he decided to hide inside her trash can, reports NBC News. Within minutes, a truck pulled up and dumped the can's contents into the back of the vehicle.

His grandmother, Carmen Salazar, who was inside the house at the time, heard him scream. "I thought that Elias was under the wheels. That he had been hit or something," she said.

Luckily for Elias, truck driver Waldo Fidele, who was checking the cans through the truck's surveillance camera, saw something drop. Fidele immediately turned off the truck's blade, saving the boy from being instantly crushed. He immediately called 911. "It was a bad day for me. I was scared," said Fidele.

"I come outside, I see him, he seemed happy," Fidele said. "I said OK, you're OK now."

Elias escaped with a minor scratch on his wrist. The boy said he thought he was "going to be a mashed potato."

Shawn Plunkett, operations manager for Waste Connections of Florida Operations in Tampa, called Fidele a hero.

"He's truly a hero," said Plunkett. "The boy had been hiding in a garbage can with the lid closed. If it weren't for Fidele keeping a close eye on the rearview cameras, it's likely that the boy would've been killed without anyone ever discovering how."

"The truck instantly treats trash like garbage disposal does. Then after it is in the truck, it heads straight to an incendiary. Nobody would have ever known what happened to him," Plunkett said.

In 2019, a sanitation worker was crushed to death by the mechanical arm of his garbage truck at Riverbank in California. The worker was on the job when the accident happened.