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.”