Stunned family members embraced one another, struggling to come to terms with the loss.
Richard Errico, 54, was killed instantly after officials say he tumbled out of the cab and slipped beneath the wheels of a 65,000-pound sanitation truck.
Errico was on-duty and alone at the time of the accident. Officials say it happened shortly before 6 p.m. Saturday as he was attempting a U-turn outside the Sanitation Department’s Queens East Garage.
Why Errico fell from the truck was not immediately clear, but sanitation workers routinely operate with the doors to the cab wide open, because they get in and out of the trucks so often.
City Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch consoled the victim’s relatives, then briefed Mayor Eric Adams, who arrived on the scene to meet with family members and to get an update on the investigation.
“Our department mourns the loss of Sanitation Worker Richard Errico,” she said in a statement, “a 19-year veteran who served the people of Douglaston, Little Neck, and Bayside as one of the Strongest. He did it proudly. I ask all New Yorkers to pray for his family.” Adams said.