DETROIT, MI -- Some hawk-eyed neighbors in Brightmoor last week snapped photos of a local restoration company leaving junk in the driveway of a vacant Detroit home, posting the pictures online and calling out Servepro of Redford.

The owner of the Detroit-based business said Monday the two employees who stored debris in the driveway and later returned to pick it up have been fired.

"There's no way we can go and dump trash somewhere," said Moses Shepherd. "I had to terminate them. They were good employees, but I had no choice."

Detroit neighborhoods with large swaths of abandonment are often used illegally as dumping grounds.

But Servepro, a flood and fire restoration company, is paid by insurance companies that reimburse disposal costs.

The franchise's operations manager, who said he hasn't slept all weekend because of stress over the incident, called it a misguided attempt by the employees to keep equipment inside their truck clean by temporarily storing flood-damaged furniture in the driveway.

"It was not what it appeared to be," said the supervisor, Terry Davis. "We weren't dumping. They tried to put it somewhere on a temporary basis. It was something that shouldn't have happened, something that will never happen again."

Shepherd said he plans to meet with a neighborhood group on Tuesday to explain.

(Update: Neighbors met with the owner and altered their website to praise the business for its responsiveness.)

He said the employees were supposed to leave the sullied furniture at the job site, a flooded home in Garden City, empty the truck of equipment at the company's Detroit location and then go back for the trash.

"The reason they did not do that, they wanted to get off work early," Shepherd said. "They were trying to cut some corners."

He said receipts from dump sites are always required for compensation from the insurance companies and that there wasn't any intention to permanently leave the refuse in the driveway.

"We would never go and dump trash into somebody's neighborhood," Shepherd said. "I know people dump in Detroit all the time. It's a big issue.

"We would never in a million years do something like that. Especially with my name and my company on the side of the truck You would have to be an idiot."

Follow Khalil AlHajal on Twitter @DetroitKhalil or on Facebook at Detroit Khalil. He can be reached at kalhajal@mlive.com or 313-643-0527.