Garbage Collector Critically Injured by Truck’s Hydraulic Arm

A 31-year-old trash truck driver was critically injured in Ventura Tuesday when a hydraulic arm used to pick up garbage cans pinned the man against his vehicle, crushing his chest.

The accident occurred about 8:45 a.m. as Adrian Rodriguez Ochoa of Ventura was making his usual rounds on Hayes Avenue in the eastern end of the city.

Doris Hackett, a Hayes Avenue resident, called 911 after she looked out her front window and saw the hydraulic arm fall against Ochoa on the passenger side of the truck.

“It was so sudden, I couldn’t believe it,” Hackett said. “I just looked out there one minute and the next minute it was down.

“I went out first before I called,” she said. “I thought he might be able to tell me which lever on the truck I could pull to get that thing off of him. But he wasn’t conscious, I guess.”

Hackett said the truck arm’s motor continued to make a whirring noise, as if it were hoisting a trash can.

When firefighters arrived five minutes later, Ochoa had no pulse and was not breathing. After moving the hydraulic arm, firefighters cleared Ochoa’s airway, began resuscitation efforts and felt a pulse.

He was taken by ambulance to Ventura County Medical Center and was listed in critical condition as he underwent surgery late Tuesday, authorities said.

State occupational safety investigators and officials with the Ventura-based trash company, E. J. Harrison & Sons Inc., are looking into the cause of the accident. Mechanics were taking apart and examining Ochoa’s truck in the company yard Tuesday.

A spokesman for Cal-OSHA in San Francisco would not comment on their investigation, but he said the company has had no citations or accidents in the past three years.

The truck Ochoa was driving is operated by just one person, who manipulates a large hydraulic arm to lift and empty residential trash cans into the truck bed.

Company officials said they do not understand why the arm fell and crushed Ochoa. They said he could not have been manipulating the controls from where he was pinned, about five feet away. When it fell, the arm was not grasping a trash can.

“It’s got to be something wrong with the truck for it to come down automatically,” said Jack Corrales, a company supervisor who was waiting at the hospital for word of Ochoa’s condition.

Nan Drake, a company spokeswoman and consultant, said: “Nobody knows what happened. It was a very freak accident.”

She said drivers normally operate the same trucks each day. But on Tuesday, Ochoa’s truck was taken out for service and he was driving a different truck.

Drake said all trucks are inspected and serviced on a regular schedule, but she did not know when the hydraulic system on Ochoa’s truck was last checked.

Ochoa has worked for the trash company seven years. He was described by company officials as a model employee with an unblemished driving record.

“Everybody likes him,” Corrales said. “He was in a good mood when he came to work.”

Ochoa’s brother, Manuel, also drives a side-loader for E. J. Harrison. He was working several miles away on Ralston Street in Ventura when the accident occurred.

“I feel not really good. I’m worried,” he said at the hospital as he waited with his brother’s wife, Leticia.

Ochoa has two sons, a 6-year-old and an infant just 1 month old, his brother said.