 A Denver man is in critical condition after falling into a trash chute at a downtown apartment building and being crushed by the compactor for a couple of minutes before help arrived. Scott Walsh, 22, was with a female friend Friday evening in an apartment building near Union Station when her phone fell down the trash chute on the building’s first floor, Walsh’s friend Matt Johnson said. “When they brought him out he was still conscious,” Johnson said. “He kept saying that his leg was broken but he didn’t know how bad it really was.” 
 
 The compactor broke both of Walsh’s legs, cracked his skull on both sides and ruptured arteries in his neck, his friend Liz DiSalvo said. He’s always been one to help others and now we have the chance to help him relieve some of his financial burden so he can focus on healing.
– A Denver man is badly injured but lucky to be alive after falling into a weight-activated trash compactor while trying to retrieve a friend's phone. Scott Walsh, 22, tried to help his friend after her phone fell into a trash chute at an apartment complex Friday night. He fell about 15 feet into the compactor after losing his balance. "He was reaching down to get it for her and fell head first down the chute," friend Liz DeSalvo tells Denver 7. "When he fell down, it activated the compactor and he was in there, I would say, approximately five minutes." Another friend, Matt Johnson, says emergency services arrived within minutes and rescued Walsh, who had been screaming in pain and was still conscious. "I saw him come out of the trash compactor," Johnson says. "It wasn't a very good scene. He's very lucky to be alive." Walsh was hospitalized with two broken legs, fractures to both sides of his skull, ruptured arteries in his neck, and facial injuries, the Denver Post reports. Johnson says it's a "miracle" that Walsh survived without brain or spinal damage. Walsh's friends have started a GoFundMe campaign to help him pay his medical bills. (In another tragic accident, a man looking for his lost phone was killed by a roller coaster.)