BALTIMORE — Travis Christian works for DPW and was one of the last people to see Ronald Silver II alive.
On August 2nd, both Christian and Silver were working in 100-degree heat.
"Unfortunately, I ended up passing out shortly before Mr. Silver passed out. When I passed out and hit the ground, I fell and hit the back of my head. Mr. Silver kind of shook me and woke me up off of the ground, and when I asked him what happened, he said I collapsed," says Christian.
Christian says after he regained consciousness he and Ronald Silver continued to work for another hour before Silver collapsed.
"When I heard he collapsed I was on the left on the other side of the truck I heard him screaming and hollering. So as I dumped the trash inside the truck I went to the right-hand side to see what was wrong with Mr. Silver. Mr. Silver was on the ground face first when I came across the trash truck," he says.
After multiple attempts, Christian was able to get Silver into the DPW truck with the driver.
He says the driver did nothing to help either of the workers.
"The driver did not call for help, I do not recall him calling for any help," says Christian
Instead, Christian says the driver told the men to get back to work despite Silver going in and out of consciousness.
He says that behavior is common in the workplace.
"We all knew that in the weeks before that Isabel Cummings, the Inspector General, had warned DPW and the City of Baltimore of the horrific conditions in which DPW workers were expected to work," says Thiru Vignarajah.
Last month, Khalil Zaied was officially sworn in as the new DPW director and told WMAR that there would be changes to operations within the department.
"The culture that existed before we are not going to tolerate, so we are going to actually be holding everybody accountable to it but before we hold anybody accountable we're going to make sure that all of the supervisors that have not gotten enough training that the training is there," says Zaied.
But the Silver family wants more than change from the department; they want any hidden information about DPW's working conditions and details of what happened on August 2nd to be released to the public.
