Homeless man nearly gets crushed by bulldozer

On Monday morning, crews at the Sun Street Transfer Station made a shocking discovery as they were processing trash loads brought in from a routine cleanup of Salinas’ Chinatown.

“They were pretty distraught, they were shaken. Still, I talk to them and they tell me they get chills,” said Cesar Zuniga, the assistant general manager at the transfer station.

After a dump truck dropped its trash load at the station, a heavy-duty trash compactor bulldozer proceeded to push the pile to one area and actually did push it a few feet. But that is when the worker noticed something moving.

It turned out to be a homeless man, hidden beneath the trash and just seconds away from being crushed by the bulldozer.

Zuniga says if he had not been spotted, the man might not have made it out alive.

“This is very large equipment, large loaders that weigh an excess of 50,000 pounds. And being crushed by one of those would have been fatal,” said Zuniga.

Luckily, the homeless man was able to walk himself into an ambulance. But the question is: how did he get into the dump truck in the first place?

The city says he crawled in to go after his belongings.

“This is the first to our knowledge that an individual has actually climbed into the back of the truck to try and obtain their materials,” said Chris Callihan, the Salinas city attorney.

But some of the homeless here, think the man was just scooped up by the dump truck.

“He was asleep in his tent,” said one homeless woman. “And they don’t care, they’ll just go up… they don’t care who’s in there or whatever. They knew, you know, they didn’t even bother looking in there.”

Of course, the city adamantly denies that claim. But for workers at the transfer station, it is a new concern to watch out for.

“With this happening, we definitely are keeping a closer eye on the loads that get brought here from the sweeps,” said Zuniga.

The Salinas city attorney says they are required to put up notices a few days before a potential street sweep in Chinatown, and they said they did do that. But the homeless say they need more time.