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Abbotsford fire crews rescue woman from back of garbage truck

Woman was reportedly sleeping in a dumpster in Chilliwack and was picked up by the truck on its route

Fire crews were called to a rural west Abbotsford property after a woman was found in a garbage truck Sunday morning.

The woman had reportedly been sleeping in a dumpster near a Chilliwack business and had been dumped into the truck on its regular route.

She was able to make her way to the top of the pile, as the driver was about to dump another load of into the truck while at an Abbotsford property, according to resident Stan Pilot, who lives on the property. The driver spotted movement in the back of the truck through a camera feed and stopped to check it out, Pilot said, “because apparently it’s happened to him before, where people were sleeping in dumpsters.”

“When I got up this morning, I heard the garbage truck come in; I didn’t hear it go out. I thought I’d go out and see what was going on, because it’s usually in and out in a few minutes, and then the ambulance shows up,” Pilot said.

“And then I go out there and there’s this lady on top of the garbage truck. She was yelling she was trying to get out and she was stuck. … She was in there for quite a while apparently, and if this load would have went in, if the fellow didn’t see her, she wouldn’t have made it.”

Pilot said it did not appear to be difficult to extract the woman from the truck.

The fire department was called and rescued the woman, who was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

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