Boy survives ordeal in trash truck
November 4, 2008
By Ryan Haggerty
Milwaukee Leadership Training
Center:
Boot-camp leader
teaching despite child sex charges
Sex charges dismissed against instructor at
military-style school
A 14-year-old Milwaukee boy
survived a horrific chain of events Tuesday after he was dumped from
a large trash container into the back of a recycling truck,
Germantown police and Waste Management officials said.
The boy may have been inside the
truck for as long as five hours, but his injuries were not
considered life-threatening, Germantown police Lt. Brian Henning
said.
That the boy survived such a
situation is "just shy of a miracle," said Lynn Morgan, a
spokeswoman for Waste Management.
"It was a very dangerous situation,
and this is an incredibly fortunate outcome and a very, very lucky
young man," Morgan said.
The boy, from Milwaukee's south
side, was reported missing Monday after he ran away from the
Milwaukee Leadership Training Center, a boot camp-style school for
teens at N. 52nd St. and W. North Ave., Milwaukee police said.
The school called the boy's mother
after the boy got into an argument with a teacher, but the boy ran
away before his mother arrived, Milwaukee police said.
The boy was apparently inside a
large recycling bin containing cardboard when the truck's operator
picked up the container with the truck's mechanical arms and emptied
its contents into the truck, Morgan said.
The truck was collecting cardboard
from commercial customers, Morgan said.
Police and Waste Management
officials were trying to determine when and where the container was
picked up and why the boy was inside, Henning said.
The truck continued on its route,
and the cardboard inside was probably compacted multiple times by
the truck's compactor blade, Morgan said.
The boy was spotted by Waste
Management employees about 2 p.m. when the truck's contents were
dumped at a recycling processing center in Germantown, Morgan said.
Cardboard that is dumped at the
facility is pushed by a front-end loader to a conveyor belt that
feeds a baling machine, Morgan said.
The boy was semiconscious when he
was found just after the load was dumped, Henning said. He was taken
to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa for treatment.
The boy is lucky to be alive,
Morgan said.
"To be in the container, survive
the tumble into the (truck) unscathed, experience the compacting
apparently without (life-threatening) injuries and then survive
tumbling out of the truck at the recycling center . . . is just shy
of a miracle, in my opinion," she said.
Boy survives being trapped in trash
truck
Nov. 5, 2008
A 14-year-old boy is miraculously
alive after spending up to five hours trapped inside a recycling
truck in Milwaukee, officials say.
Germantown police Lt. Brian Henning
said the boy, whose identity was not released, was freed from the
trash truck after several hours Tuesday and thankfully avoided
suffering any life-threatening injuries, the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel said.
Police said the teenager apparently
had hidden inside a large trash container after running away from
the Milwaukee Leadership Training Center, a teen center modeled
after a military boot camp.
The trash container was then dumped
into the recycling truck as part of a routine pickup and the boy
became trapped for hours until Waste Management (NYSE:WMI) employees
spotted him during the trash dumping process, police said.
Waste Management spokeswoman Lynn
Morgan said the boy's discovery and the fact he is expected to
survive is nothing short of a miracle.
"It was a very dangerous situation,
and this is an incredibly fortunate outcome and a very, very lucky
young man," Morgan told the Journal Sentinel.
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