A garbage truck driver for the city of St. Petersburg was arrested over the weekend after he hit and killed a woman as she slept in an alley, police said.
Nathan D. Brown, 51, was arrested Saturday on a charge of leaving the scene of a crash involving death after fatally striking 49-year-old Candice Roberts, according to an arrest report and information provided by the St. Petersburg Police Department.
Brown arrived about 6:30 a.m. to an alley east of Third Street North, between Central and First avenues, in a 2019 Kenworth truck to pick up a dumpster. A bystander warned Brown that people were sleeping in the alley, and Brown also told police later that he saw people sleeping there, according to the report.
Brown backed the truck east down the alley and hooked up the dumpster. As he drove west to exit onto Third Street, he hit Roberts, then left without helping the woman or providing his information, the report states.
Brown was booked into the Pinellas County Jail and released Sunday after posting a $50,000 bond, records show. Efforts to reach him Monday were not immediately successful, and an attorney was not listed for him in court records.
Brown is a sanitation specialist who has worked for the city since 1997, according to a city spokesperson. He has been placed on paid administrative leave.
A GoFundMe campaign created by a friend of Brown’s to raise money for legal fees said Brown did not see the woman and called the crash “a pure accident.”
“Nathan is a hardworking person who never imagined he would find himself in this position,” said the page created by Patrick Parmentier of St. Petersburg.
The charge is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in state prison.