An employee of a commercial garbage hauling company was killed Monday afternoon in the DeSoto Parish landfill after another truck that was unloading waste rolled onto his truck.
A second occupant of the truck belonging to Live Oak Environmental received minor injuries, parish Administrator Steve Brown said.
Deputy Coroner Billy Locke later identified the victim as 57-year-old Anthony Smith of Shreveport. He was pronounced dead at the scene
The landfill, which receives permitted waste from throughout the region, is closed until further notice. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating, along with the DeSoto Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Brown said the accident happened around 2:30 p.m. when the driver of a Francis Drilling Fluids truck pulled into one of the waste containment cells at the landfill to unload a sand material. As the driver raised the bed to release his load, the truck rolled over onto the Live Oak truck that was sitting next to it waiting to discharge its load, Brown said.
The landfill is permitted to accept a variety of waste and has customers from neighboring parishes such as Bossier, Caddo and even East Texas.
“Periodically, we do get a truck that rolls, but usually no one is hurt,” Brown said. “I just hate this.”
The garbage trucks access the cell area via a prepared haul road. Once in the cell there is an unloading area that is a mixture of soil, clay and rocks.
This is the first fatality that has been reported at the 240-acre landfill, located on U.S. Highway 84 east of Mansfield, since its opening.