A Pinal County man is down one leg and is in extremely critical condition after being run over by a cotton picking machine being pulled by the tractor he was driving.
The mishap occurred just after 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Pinal County Sheriff's deputies got a call that a man had fallen off of the tractor he was driving and had been run over.
When cops got to the scene, a cotton field near South Sunland Gin and
West Battagilia Road in Arizona City, they discovered the man had not
only been run over by the tractor, but the machine harvesting cotton
being pulled by the tractor, as well.
Here's how a cotton picker works, compliments of Wikipedia:
It uses rows of barbed spindles that rotate at high speed and remove the seed-cotton from the plant. The seed-cotton is then removed from the spindles by a counter-rotating doffer and is then blown up into the basket.
And that's what the victim, 55-year-old Javier Rios, was dealing with.
Rios, police say, somehow fell off the tractor and under the cotton picker. The tractor continued forward until a left tire on the trailer got stuck in an irrigation ditch, disabling it.
Rios was treated at the scene and transported to the Maricopa Medical Center in extremely critical condition. His right leg had to be amputated as a result of the accident.
