LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - A 30-year-old contract employee who worked on a Lexington city garbage truck was injured on the job and died Friday, but how she was injured four days earlier has not been made public, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports.
Whitney Gardner died of head trauma at the University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, according to a news release from the Fayette County coroner’s office. Gardner’s death has been ruled an accident and was still under investigation Tuesday.
Gardner was a contract employee for Labor Works, which provides temporary staffing. Derek Gabriel, CEO of Labor Works, said Gardner has worked for the company since 2015 and frequently worked with the Lexington Division of Waste Management. As part of her job, Gardner rode with city-employed drivers. Her duties included getting picking up loose garbage and retrieving trash cans. Employees can ride on the outside or back of the truck under limited circumstances, like on small residential streets in neighborhoods, but officials have not disclosed whether she was riding outside the truck when she was injured.
“All we have been told is that she was found lying on the ground,” Gabriel told the paper. “We can’t express enough how awful we feel for her and her family.”
Susan Straub, a spokeswoman for the city, said Labor Works has been given information about the accident. The city referred all questions about Gardner’s death to Labor Works and the Fayette County coroner’s office, which has not disclosed further details.
As a contract employee, Garden was not a member of the union that represents the city’s garbage workers, but the union was still raising money to help pay for her funeral expenses.
“Whitney was one of us. Union, nonunion, city employee, Labor Works - it doesn’t matter,” said American Federation of State, Local and Municipal Employees Council 962 spokesman Ron Richmond. “What we do is not glamorous. It’s not easy and definitely unsafe at times. This week we lost one of our family.”
Gardner’s mother, Peggy Roark, said her daughter was her best friend.
“She was a beautiful girl inside and out,” Roark said. “She was smart. She was artistic. She always had a smile for you. Everybody loved her. She had a great personality. She was down to earth … there was nothing she couldn’t do. She was my best friend and my sunshine.”
Roark said she was especially thankful to the waste management employees who have been helping her.
“They have really shown me so much compassion,” Roark said. “Their hearts are just as broken as mine. They loved her.”
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