'Really Intoxicated' Couple Loaded into Garbage Truck, Deputies Say

A driver got quite a surprise Wednesday morning when yelling and banging started coming from the back of the garbage truck he was driving.

Unsure what to make of the racket, the man pulled over to investigate. That’s when Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputies say he found a man and a woman trapped in the back of his truck. They were stuck among mounds of refuse and couldn’t get out.

Alarmed, the driver called in the cavalry.

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When Hillsborough deputies and EMS units arrived on the scene, they were able to retrieve the pair and learned the tale behind the driver’s unusual pickup.

It seems Donald Jordan, 37, and Lisa Sirbella, 49, had fallen asleep inside a dumpster at the WaWa store on the corner of Orient Road and Hillsborough Avenue. The two were inside the dumpster when the unsuspecting driver came along to make his routine pickup.

“It was originally believed that they were homeless, but it seems they were just really intoxicated after hanging out at the casino,” Cristal Bermudez Nunez, sheriff’s office spokeswoman, wrote in an email to media.

The Seminole Hard Rock Casino is just across the street from where the driver made the pickup shortly after 5 a.m.

While Jordan and Spirella had no visible injuries, the two were taken to Tampa General Hospital for treatment of back pains, Nunez noted.

Patch file photo

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