A homeless man sleeping under a pile of plastic crates was killed yesterday when a city garbage truck's jaws crushed him as it tried to cart away trash, police said yesterday.
The man, described as in his 50s with a beard, was wrapped in blankets and plastic bags. He was grabbed by the truck's front-end loader claws at around 3 a.m. along a stretch of Meeker Avenue under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn's Greenpoint section.
A sanitation worker in a nearby dump truck spotted the homeless man desperately flailing his arms in an attempt to free himself. Before he got the chance to alert his co-worker, the bucket's claws closed shut, snapping the man's body.
He died at 4:20 a.m. at Woodhull Hospital.
Residents said the man had lived in the neighborhood for the past few years, spending his days drinking cheap beer and sleeping under garbage bags.
"He drank, but he didn't get in trouble," said Peter Pizza, who lives across the street from the site of the accident. "He never hurt nobody. He never bothered nobody."
Umesh Patel, who runs a deli on Meeker Avenue, said the mysterious man would often come in and buy beer and rummage through garbage bags collecting cans.
He was a good guy," Patel said. "He never stole anything."
Pizza said Meeker Avenue had become an illegal garbage dumpsite and fed-up residents had lodged complaints about the smell.
"There was always a bunch of black garbage bags there," he said.
Neighbors said the Sanitation Department sends trucks to the area every few weeks to clean up.
Pizza said the efforts haven't made a difference.
"They're just going to dump here again after a little while," he said.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg named a panel yesterday in a bid to "end chronic homelessness."
He said the city finds itself "at a painful impasse" because it has focused on dealing with people in shelters and not addressing the "root causes" of homelessness.
There are some 40,000 homeless people in the city.
