JOIN USHiding thief crushed in trash truck, calls for help
When police were called out to a robbery at a local Wal-Mart, the suspected thief appeared to vanish into thin air.
For about 40 minutes on Wednesday morning, officers in Alliance, Ohio, searched the area for a suspect who was accused of trying to sneak about $1,000 worth of merchandise out of the superstore’s side door, Daily Mail reported.
Then the police got a call from a man claiming to be his friend. Alliance police Lt William Morris told Fox 8 News that the caller told police that his friend, James Brienzo, 37, had used his mobile phone to get help.
He was “hiding in a dumpster behind a Wal-Mart in Alliance and he was hiding from police and it was just picked up and dumped in a trash truck and they were mobile and he needed help.”
Emergency operators also took a 911 call from a frantic Brienzo, begging them to find the truck. “I’m in the back of a trash truck that keeps compacting me!” Brienzo said as dispatchers urged him to calm down. Police say Brienzo was literally being compacted along with between six and eight tonnes of rubbish.
‘I’m dying’
Police used the signal from Brienzo’s mobile phone to locate where he was. Brienzo told dispatchers he thought he was dying. “I’m dying, man,” he said, complaining his bones were being crushed, saying he knew he wouldn’t walk again and screaming at the top of his lungs each time the truck driver picked up another load and compacted what was in the truck. He was heard telling dispatchers at one point that he didn’t care what happened to him, he just wanted to live, though it meant capture.
The truck was located near a recycling plant in Alliance. Brienzo was taken to a medical centre and is in critical condition.