Waste truck driver drives truck off I-95 ramp; pluges 75 feet into Miami park

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In the seconds before his garbage truck plowed through a concrete highway barrier and plunged 75 feet down into a popular Little Havana park, Kaseem Smith was driving leisurely over the Miami River.

He wasn’t speeding. He wasn’t texting on his cell phone. And with most of Miami taking President’s Day off, he wasn’t fighting traffic.

Then suddenly, with a clear roadway before him, Smith violently turned the steering wheel of his city of Miami garbage truck to the right, sending his vehicle off the Interstate 95 Southwest Seventh Street exit ramp, newly released video footage shows. As the truck plummeted for three long seconds down into José Martí Park, investigators believe footage from inside the cab also shows that Smith was ejected mid-air like a fighter pilot without a parachute.

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Rescue crews arriving at the scene found the Smith, 32, lying in a yellow driver’s vest on asphalt amid concrete rubble and several tons of scattered recyclables, just feet from the twisted steel of his truck, which landed so forcefully its cab was split from its garbage container, its door blown off. He was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital with serious injuries, and has since recovered enough to have been released.

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