A man died on Monday after being buried in hot asphalt while trying to repair a dump truck in Jackson, the capital of the US state of Mississippi.
According to the Jackson Police Department, the man - identified as Darrell Sheriff, 41 - was under the truck trying to fix a hydraulic line when the trailer door opened and hot asphalt fell on him.
Several people at the scene rushed to help Sheriff and tried to clear the asphalt to save him, but his “injuries were too severe to survive,” Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade told a press conference.
“It was horrible. It was horrible and it's something you don't want to see. You know, seeing it was one thing, but actually talking to the family members and their grief, their pain, was another. Their shock...”, he said, adding that the family will remember him as ‘a good, hard-working man who was just trying to make a living’.
The incident is being treated as an accidental death due to a “malfunction” of the vehicle.
