‘I Was Gonna Be A Mashed Potato’: Florida Boy Recounts Garbage Truck Horror

A Florida boy’s attempt to hide in a trash can almost turned tragic when it was picked up by a garbage truck and nearly sent into the choppers as the blades turned on. 

“I was thinking, ‘This might be the end for me,’” 7-year-old Elias Quezada told WFLA, the NBC station in Tampa. “I almost thought I was gonna be a mashed potato.”

But then a sharp-eyed driver named Waldo Fidele spotted the boy in the truck’s surveillance camera and rushed to turn the choppers off. 

“It was a bad day for me,” Fidele told Fox13 in Tampa. “I was scared.”

Luckily, he was able to act in time and call 911 for help. 

Elias’s grandmother said it all happened so fast. 

“In a minute, he went out and the next thing I hear is the sound of the truck and a guy screaming,” Carmen Salazar told WFLA.

Elias suffered a minor cut ― and perhaps the beginning of a lifelong aversion to a certain household item. 

“I don’t like trash cans anymore,” he told WFLA.

Then again, Elias did make an exception when he spoke to Fox 13: “Unless it’s like a tiny trash can that’s inside the house, then it might be fine.”