Witness to Death
And so, Chad James and I met up Sunday morning for our traditional long run. After a leisurely pace out to Pine Gully, discussing a variety of life's topics, our pace picked up as we settled on some political talk. Crossing Meyer Rd. we expected nothing exceptional but the push home. However, within a hundred meters of crossing the Meyer Rd./Todville Rd. intersection, we heard the most violent and loudest vehicular crash ever fathomed on this lonely road.
As I spun quickly, I witnessed a white Ford F150 spinning violently and out of control on its roof. Instantly I thought there had a been a head-on collision at the intersection. Chad's Navy instincts took over and he easily out-sprinted me to the vehicle to check on the driver. I, a stride behind, began yelling for someone to call 911, identified an Indian woman behind her gated community, and had her call for help. This was not good.
Sure enough, Chad was in a business-like deameanor and panic. I raced over to the driver's side, expecting the worst. As I lay flat on my chest, I saw a peaceful, yet gruesome scene: the driver, a young, shoeless male, was laying flat on his side, almost like he was sleeping. However, it appeared that the roof had caved in, he had obviously been thrown around in the cabin, and the truck laid to rest on top of his skull. There was no movement from the driver, and no sound, other than Radiohead's "Creep" blasting from the still-funcioning stereo.
In this almost surreal scene, with Radiohead playing on a silent, warm morning in Seabrook, it then became apparent as to "what happened?" Within minutes, a crowd had formed, and within minutes the police showed up. A cyclist related to me that he saw the truck speeding down Todville, tried to make the sharp and immediate right turn, bailed on the turn and presumably over-corrected his steerting wheel which caused the tired to hit the ditch embankment and inevitably flipped the truck over. Just out of this world.
Chad and I tried to resume our run, tried to rationalize what we had just scene. If anything, the driver had died instantly, there was no pain, no struggle for life, just here one second, gone the next. We had to stop a few times, shake out the adrenaline rush and chills on our body, in order to finish up the run. We were traumatized, that was for sure.
This event replaced the last death scene we witnessed on Todville, thinking back to a few Decembers ago when a deer had impaled itself on an iron fence and was dying in front of our faces with every futile attempt to free itself from the self-inflicted stab.
We will be more careful. As Chad said, "we need to have our heads on a swivel" when we run. Very scary, but very real. This will not be forgotten so easily.
As I spun quickly, I witnessed a white Ford F150 spinning violently and out of control on its roof. Instantly I thought there had a been a head-on collision at the intersection. Chad's Navy instincts took over and he easily out-sprinted me to the vehicle to check on the driver. I, a stride behind, began yelling for someone to call 911, identified an Indian woman behind her gated community, and had her call for help. This was not good.
Sure enough, Chad was in a business-like deameanor and panic. I raced over to the driver's side, expecting the worst. As I lay flat on my chest, I saw a peaceful, yet gruesome scene: the driver, a young, shoeless male, was laying flat on his side, almost like he was sleeping. However, it appeared that the roof had caved in, he had obviously been thrown around in the cabin, and the truck laid to rest on top of his skull. There was no movement from the driver, and no sound, other than Radiohead's "Creep" blasting from the still-funcioning stereo.
In this almost surreal scene, with Radiohead playing on a silent, warm morning in Seabrook, it then became apparent as to "what happened?" Within minutes, a crowd had formed, and within minutes the police showed up. A cyclist related to me that he saw the truck speeding down Todville, tried to make the sharp and immediate right turn, bailed on the turn and presumably over-corrected his steerting wheel which caused the tired to hit the ditch embankment and inevitably flipped the truck over. Just out of this world.
Chad and I tried to resume our run, tried to rationalize what we had just scene. If anything, the driver had died instantly, there was no pain, no struggle for life, just here one second, gone the next. We had to stop a few times, shake out the adrenaline rush and chills on our body, in order to finish up the run. We were traumatized, that was for sure.
This event replaced the last death scene we witnessed on Todville, thinking back to a few Decembers ago when a deer had impaled itself on an iron fence and was dying in front of our faces with every futile attempt to free itself from the self-inflicted stab.
We will be more careful. As Chad said, "we need to have our heads on a swivel" when we run. Very scary, but very real. This will not be forgotten so easily.
