III
Thirty Yard Coffin.
Police officers will tell you that dumpsters are
often crime
scenes, places where drugs and weapons are abandoned or stashed.
They're also places for anonymous burial, a modern day potter's field
for murder victims, abandoned babies and homeless people. But
dumpsters are dangerous objects themselves, huge steel boxes
containting an unpredictable mass of sharp, heavy, biologically and
chemically active materials.
Trash collectors have dangerous jobs; they work in
traffic, alongside a rolling 20 ton hydraulic presses, moving garbage.
Trash Collector Dies after Inhaling Discarded Acid
By Lawrence Van Gelder, New York Times, November 13, 1996
New York -- A city worker died Tuesday after he inhaled the fumes of a
corrosive acid from a discarded container that burst under the
compacting blades of a garbage truck making routine collections in
Brooklyn. Fire Department hazardous materials experts identified the
substance as hydrofluoric acid, often used to etch glass. A second
sanitation worker was injured in the incident, which brought the Mayor
and Sanitation Commissioner rushing to the burn unit of New York
Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, touched off an investigation by police
and sanitation departments and raised the possibility of homicide
charges against those responsible for leaving the acid to be picked up.
The source of acid was not known Tuesday night.
Hydroflouric acid acts by combining with sodium and
calcium inside
your cells. It passes straight through skin and begins to
chemically
burn muscle tissue from the inside out, which is described as being
excruciatingly painful. Depending on how much a victim is exposed
to,
doctors can halt the process with a calcim drip. Otherwise, the
patient will continue to suffer until the acid, tracing it's way
through the circulatory system, destroys the heart.
Asleep or passed out, someone occaisonally ends up
in the garbage
truck. Operating the compactor is known as tossing the salad.
Girl, 8, Found Buried Alive in Trash Bin
By JILL BARTON, Associated Press Writer 57 minutes ago
LAKE WORTH, Fla. - An 8-year-old girl who was raped and buried alive
told a friend she remembers her attacker towering over her before she
passed out, then awoke seven hours later beneath a pile of rocks and
concrete blocks when she heard the voices of rescuers.
The girl, who had been staying overnight at her godmother's house, was
reported missing early Sunday. She was hospitalized in good condition
Monday and a teenage boy who also had been staying at the home was
arrested. Authorities said he confessed...
The girl was found Sunday morning when police Sgt. Mike Hall climbed
into a 25-foot long trash bin, opened the lid to a 30-gallon recycling
container and saw part of her hand and foot peeking out from under
heavy concrete slabs.