Man dies after climbing into bin before it was emptied into lorry

A man was crushed to death after the bin he had climbed inside was emptied into a lorry.

Vitalij Maceljuch, 36, a Czech national who was born in Ukraine, got inside the bin near a Wren store in Chester in the middle of the night and likely fell asleep.

Despite the bin being checked, which included shaking it on its forks, the contents, including Vitalij, were emptied into the Biffa lorry and crushed.

In May last year, police were called to the Thorncliffe waste management site in Flintshire after his body was found travelling along a conveyor belt. Staff initially thought it was a mannequin before making the horrific discovery, Ruthin Coroner's Court heard.

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Assistant coroner David Lewis at Ruthin said Mr Maceljuch, of no fixed address, had a drug history in North Wales and Cheshire and that traces of cannabis and amphetamine were in his body.

Home Office pathologist Dr Jonathan Medcalf said: ”It’s possible he was experiencing some of the effects of the substances at the time of his death.”

There were severe injuries to the head and neck area. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said there was a “danger of death” warning sign on the bin.

The drugs taken by Mr Maceljuch could cause drowsiness and it was likely he had been asleep in the bin. CCTV footage showed him entering the bin at 4am.

The HSE was satisfied neither the driver nor the two waste companies were at fault.

The coroner recorded a conclusion of misadventure and that Mr Maceljuch died at the skip site at Alltami on May 10, last year. “It’s highly likely his death occurred some time before his arrival at that location,” Mr Lewis remarked, however.

“It seems to be a case of an act of misadventure in that Mr Maceljuch died as a result of actions which were intentional but had unintended consequences.”

It follows the similar case of RAF airman Corrie McKeague who disappeared in September 2016 at the age of 23.

Corrie, originally from Dunfermline in Scotland, had been serving at RAF Honington near Bury St Edmunds, where he was last spotted.

CCTV of Corrie moments before he vanished prompted the theory he might have crawled into a recycling bin to sleep before being crushed to death by a refuse truck and taken to a landfill site 30 miles away.