A Denver man has filed a negligence lawsuit against a waste management company after a dumpster he was sleeping in was emptied into a garbage truck, where he and the rest of its contents were crushed by the truck’s compactor.
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Steven Egloff filed the lawsuit Monday in Denver District Court against Waste Connections of Colorado, the company responsible for emptying the dumpster.
The suit follows more than a year after the April 2025 near-fatal crushing, when a truck picked up the RiNo neighborhood dumpster in which Egloff was sleeping and collected its contents. Egloff was dropped on his head and body, and the truck continued driving before its driver started the compactor. The driver heard Egloff’s screams during the truck’s next stop and called 911, according to the lawsuit.
Egloff sustained “a large scalp laceration with degloving injury,” meaning that the skin was ripped off, the lawsuit alleges. He broke several ribs, as well as his right upper arm in at least two places. He also broke one of the vertebrae in his spine. He had to be rescued from the truck and required “extensive hospitalization.”
The suit accuses Waste Collections of negligence for failing to take steps to prevent Egloff’s injuries, like requiring checks of the dumpster or the back of the truck before driving off and starting the compactor. It also alleges the company failed to properly train its staff to prevent such incidents.
“Individuals experiencing homelessness are known to seek shelter inside commercial dumpsters, particularly during freezing weather, overnight, and early-morning hours,” the lawsuit alleges. “The risk that a person may be inside a commercial dumpster is a known and foreseeable hazard in the commercial waste-collection industry.”
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The company did not immediately return messages seeking comment Friday.
The lawsuit was first reported by Westword.
Michael D. Rex, Egloff’s lawyer, said in an email that his client had climbed into the dumpster because it was cold and he didn’t have a jacket. He is now recovering in Louisiana with his sister.
“Mr. Egloff believed he was going to die as the compactor crushed him, as any reasonable person would,” Rex wrote. “He described hearing his bones break over the sound of the truck and industrial equipment; he compared the sound of his bones breaking to the sound of .22 rifle.”
Egloff’s incident was among at least three dumpster-related incidents in Colorado in the past year. In January, a Loveland man went missing after he entered a dumpster but never exited; the dumpster was later emptied and its contents driven to a landfill, where law enforcement later spent four days unsuccessfully searching for the man.
In April, a Pueblo man died after he was discovered in the back of a garbage truck. One of the truck’s operators found him seriously injured after the truck’s compression cylinder was stuck, according to Fox21.
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