Posted on 04/29/25
| News Source: WBAL
Baltimore, MD - April 29, 2025 - The cab of the trash truck in which a city worker was riding before his death may have hit 108 degrees, a new detail in a state report reveals.
Baltimore City Department of Public Works worker Ronald Silver II died on the job on Aug. 2, 2024, and a 21-page Maryland Occupational Safety and Health inspection report obtained by 11 News Investigates reveals new details.
While MOSH found the air conditioning in the three-person trash truck was working, Solid Waste Supervisor Dante Austin said in his interview with MOSH that “drivers are required to keep the windows rolled down during route collection for safety reasons, which contributes to elevated temperatures inside the cab.”
Austin added that the requirement to keep the windows down “contributes to elevated temperatures inside the cab, particularly when three workers are sharing the single cab, three-seated space.”
The sanitation worker and driver working with Silver did not include this detail, and neither did lengthy reports from the Baltimore City Office of the Inspector General and Conn Maciel Carey LLC, a Washington-based law firm that conducted an independent review of the DPW’s heat safety policies and practices.
The MOSH report’s timeline of events indicates the temperature — coupled with the heat index — hit 108.6 degrees on the day Silver was working his trash route, collapsed and died.
The report notes that while the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that Silver’s cause of death was hyperthermia, or heat exhaustion, the family declined to do an autopsy due to religious beliefs. As a result, the report concluded, “MOSH was unable to find definitive evidence confirming that heat exposure was the sole cause of Mr. Silver’s death.”
In March, MOSH issued a citation for a serious violation, claiming DPW exposed Silver and other employees to excessive heat.
The latest MOSH report explains why the agency issued that citation, stating MOSH interviewed Craig Jeter, the head of the DPW’s Bureau of Solid Waste, but did not provide a summary or notes from the interview.
11 News Investigates was first to report in October that Jeter was replaced months after Silver died, following the findings of Conn Maciel Carey’s independent review, that was ordered by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and DPW Director Khalil Zaied.
11 News Investigates obtained the latest MOSH report via a Maryland Public Information Act request.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.