A garbage truck driver near Tampa made a surprising find in the back end of a garbage truck on Wednesday morning, a man and a woman.
The garbage truck driver, Radames Valazquez, discovered the pair after picking up a dumpster and just before compacting the trash in his truck. He called 911 when he could not get the man and woman out.
“I got two people, I don’t know how they got in the back of the truck, but they stuck in the truck. I almost killed both of them,” he told the 911 dispatcher.
Hillsborough County deputies and EMS crews responded and removed Donald Jordan, 37, and Lisa Sirabella, 49, from the garbage truck.
In an image from The Smoking Gun website, Sirabella appeared to have a black eye and a wound on her nose possibly from the night the dumpster that was emptied into the garbage truck.
Deputies initially thought the pair was homeless, but later discovered they had been hanging out at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino and were intoxicated when they fell asleep in the dumpster at a WaWa gas station at Orient Road and Hillsborough Avenue. They wound up in the garbage truck when the dumpster was emptied.
“The male, it was very difficult getting information from him. He was very intoxicated wreaked of alcohol said he was visiting from Kissimee and some friends had left them stranded and they had crawled into the dumpster because it was a warm place,” said Cristal Bermudez Nunez with the the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
Jordan and Sirabella were transported to Tampa General Hospital complaining of back pain.
Hillsborough County Deputies say the WaWa dumpster was one of the garbage truck driver’s first stops, so there was not much trash in the truck at the time of the incident.
The garbage truck driver said they received training for this sort of instance just last week, although he didn’t really believe it could happen until he witnesses it today.
“I’m happy. Happy I kept people safe. I was just doing my job though.. it’s an everyday thing,” he said
