A Canadian student who had drunk more than seven pints of beer and four shots of Jägermeister was crushed to death in a bin lorry just hours after arriving in the UK, an inquest has heard.
Garrett Joseph Franklin Elsey, 22, a graduate from Canada, became separated from a friend after being asked to leave a nightclub in Bristol. Without his mobile phone, he decided not to walk back to his accommodation and instead sought refuge in a wheelie bin, unaware that a weekly collection was scheduled for later that morning.
The bin lorry hoisted the container above head height and tipped it into the back of the vehicle. Three binmen on duty told the coroner that the process was automatic and none heard Elsey cry for help above the loud hydraulic machinery. The discovery of his body was only made when the lorry was emptied at a landfill site.
The pathologist Dr Amanda Jeffrey recorded the cause of death as traumatic asphyxia. She noted that a postmortem examination found high levels of alcohol in his bloodstream—144 micrograms per 100 millilitres of blood, nearly double the legal driving limit. She added that the combination of alcohol and body warmth may have increased the risk of hypothermia, which can cause confusion and lead people to seek refuge in confined spaces.
