A 24-year-old man died Friday after he was crushed between two trucks at an industrial Flatlands dump site, police said.
Around 12:20 p.m. Friday, Saqueo Mejia of 50th Street in Sunset Park was standing outside of DeCostole Carting at 1481 Troy Avenue when a driver in a 1997 CF8 dump truck backed into him, pinning him against another truck owned by Prime Junk Removal Inc., police said.
The dump truck driver, a 31-year-old man, was “alerted by witnesses on scene about the incident and he moved the truck,” according to NYPD. Mejia was taken to Kings County Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Mejia worked with Prime Junk Removal, the police said. A call placed to Flatlands-based Prime Junk Removal was not answered Saturday.
Rich DeCostole, one of the owners of DeCostole Carting, said the incident occurred outside of his business and did not involve any of his employees. He expressed sorrow at the incident -- “the person lost their life,” he said in a phone call Saturday.
Police said the accident was under investigation by the NYPD’s Highway Patrol Collision Investigation Squad and no arrests have been made. NYPD could not confirm if federal workplace investigators were involved, and a message left for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was not immediately answered Saturday.
This was the second fatal incident involving a truck this week, the first occurring in Queens Thursday after a 35-year-old delivery worker was fatally struck by a driver in a Bud Light truck.
