A homeless man has undergone surgery and is in serious condition after a city cleanup truck in Dublin grabbed and lifted the man's tent with a mechanical claw in the middle of the day – while he was sleeping inside of it.
Apparently, the city wanted to "tidy up" the canal, and decided to clear the homeless tents alongside it. They supposedly checked inside the tents before snagging them, but even if that's true, they obviously missed this one.
According to CNN:
The unnamed man was injured when workers from Waterways Ireland, the body responsible for maintaining Ireland's rivers and canals, cleared a walkway along a canal in the Irish capital.
"A man (age unknown) was sleeping in his tent when it was being removed in an attempt to tidy the canal walk way," local police said in a statement. "The man received injuries during this incident and was removed to St. Vincent's Hospital where he remains in serious condition but stable."
According to Dublin City Council, the incident happened on Tuesday afternoon, when workers "were removing tents that were placed in a precarious and dangerous location."
A spokesman for Waterways Ireland said the body is "cooperating fully" with police investigating the incident, adding that "our thoughts are very much with the individual who was involved."
This isn't the first time something like this has happened. In December 2017 a homeless person was nearly killed after being picked up and tossed into a San Diego trash truck, as told by The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Image: Michael Coghlan / CC BY-SA 2.0 – Flickr
