An­na-Lisa Paul

The fe­male scav­enger who died af­ter be­ing struck by an ex­ca­va­tor buck­et at the Gua­napo land­fill on Thurs­day has been iden­ti­fied as Vic­to­ria Nel­son.

The 33-year-old of La Re­treat Road, Ari­ma, died around 10.50 am at hos­pi­tal on Sep­tem­ber 15 - ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 min­utes af­ter the freak ac­ci­dent oc­curred.

Re­ports in­di­cate the op­er­a­tor of the 320DL ex­ca­va­tor had just be­gun re­mov­ing a load of grass which had been dumped at the side of the road at the land­fill, when scav­engers raised an alarm and point­ed to Nel­son’s prone body which had been pinned un­der the buck­et.

Nel­son’s hus­band, Daniel, who al­so worked as a scav­enger at the land­fill was alert­ed and ar­rived to help place his wife’s body in a pri­vate ve­hi­cle so they could take her to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

Nel­son died short­ly af­ter she ar­rived at hos­pi­tal.

Fol­low­ing the ac­ci­dent on Thurs­day, the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny (SWM­COL) urged scav­engers and users of the na­tion’s land­fills to ex­er­cise cau­tion and re­main alert as they worked.

SWM­COL’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Kevin Thomp­son, ex­pressed grief over the loss and of­fered prayers to the fam­i­ly and friends of the de­ceased.

Mean­while, SWM­COL has im­ple­ment­ed in­creased on-site se­cu­ri­ty to curb the unau­tho­rised en­try of sal­vagers at the site fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

It said in a state­ment Fri­day that po­lice have closed in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent.