Residents stunned to see garbage truck dumping trash bags in Denver alley

DENVER - Residents on the 1300 blocks of Lipan and Mariposa Streets got a big surprise when they opened their garage doors Monday morning.

 

They found their alley strewn with garbage.

 

"I thought, ‘Oh my God! There’s 50 to 80 trash bags,’” Nadia MacKinnon said. “We couldn’t get out.”

 

MacKinnon said she had to physically move several bags so she and her husband could back out of their garage and go to work.

 

“When I got home from work, it was still there,” she said.

 

Next door neighbor Abdu Arzate was so frustrated by what he saw, he checked his security video to see if the drop-off was caught on camera -- it was.

 

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “A garbage truck drove by and dropped all the bags.”

 

Arzate said it happened around 4 a.m. Monday.

 

A second security camera caught the same truck doing the same thing a couple of blocks away.

 

“It’s disgusting that someone would come and disrespect our neighborhood like this,” said Mario Tapia.

 

Initially, Tapia and his neighbors thought it was intentional.

 

“Was somebody upset with somebody else,” MacKinnon asked.  “Did it happen on purpose?”

 

A spokesman for the company that owns the truck, Alpine Waste & Recycling, said it was not intentional. It was an accident.

 

“We definitely regret the inconvenience to the neighbors,” said Steve Caulk. “What happened was that we had a tailgate that malfunctioned on one of our trucks.”

 

Caulk told Denver 7, that it’s happened before, but not very often.

 

He said in this instance, “it happened in the dark and the driver wasn’t aware that it happened and the trash was left there.”

 

Caulk said another truck was sent out Tuesday morning to pick up the bags.

 

Neighbors were not happy that it took 28 hours to get the debris cleaned up.

 

“I understand there are accidents,” Arzate said. “But get it taken care of right away, not a day and a half later.”

 

MacKinnon said during that time, scavengers opened several bags and picked through the garbage.

 

There is still broken glass and other debris in the alley that neighbors say wasn’t there before.

 

Caulk said he wasn’t aware of that, and added, it might be worth having another crew check it out.