Trooper Down! (12 page)

*

There were two kids riding in the back of the truck. The father, who had been drinking, was driving. The truck hit a bank, overturned, and threw both the children out. One child, a ten-year-old girl, was pinned between the rear wheel and the fender and was lying in the dirt when I got there.

She was still alive but the truck was on top of her chest, wedged between two trees, and there was no easy way to get her out. We hooked cables to a wrecker and tried to move the truck, but that only made the pressure on the little girl worse. She began to cry and said she couldn't breathe.

The medics had arrived by then and gave her oxygen but the truck was still across her chest. I was getting desperate, trying to think of the best way to help her. I even climbed a tree to attach a cable so we could haul the truck straight up, but that didn't work either. We couldn't cut her out from under it because it was too dangerous to use a blowtorch around the gas line. I didn't know
what
to do next. I thought she was dying. It was the most helpless feeling I've ever experienced.

As a last resort, we decided to dig her out. I took off my gun and blackjack, got down on my knees, and began digging in the
dirt with my hands. Everyone pitched in. We just kept going until we were finally able to pull her to safety.

Amazingly, after we got her to the hospital we found she wasn't too seriously injured. The dirt beneath the truck was soft enough to create a slight crevice and that small space is what saved her life.

*

It was cold that morning, with fog so thick you could barely see past the hood of your car.

I got called to a wreck on a rural paved road about eight-thirty that morning near Interstate 40. When I reached the bridge that spans the interstate, it was lined with people. Ahead, I could see the top of a Trailways bus. The remainder of it was covered in fog.

I walked down the bridge abutment and saw a man lying on the shoulder of the road. He had a broken arm and cuts on his head. Other people from the bus were nearby, many of them complaining of injuries.

When I went around the bus I discovered it had landed on top of a car. Under the front wheel was a nine-year-old boy. As I went past, he looked up, grabbed me by the arm, and said, “Mister, would you get this bus off of me? I can't breathe.”

His mother was in the front seat, impaled by the gear shift. There was a small child on top of her. Both were dead.

In the fog, the mother's car had rammed a tractor trailer and bounced backwards, causing the bus to run over top of her.

I talked to the little boy and told him I would do what I could. But I wasn't sure what to do. The wreck had caused a seven-car pileup and the interstate was completely blocked.

I walked to the other side of the bus and stood there thinking. I am not a long-distance runner, but suddenly it came to me that I should run down the highway. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I was sure it would come to me soon.

About a mile from where I left the bus, I saw a wrecker. The driver spotted me as I came toward him and he climbed out of his truck to unhook the vehicle he was towing. Together, we got the wrecker through the traffic and back to the scene of the accident.

It took two and a half hours, but we finally got the bus lifted off the little boy. After we moved him, we found his seven-year-old brother beneath him on the back seat, dead.

The nine-year-old boy was the only survivor in the car. Later, I found out that his father was an alcoholic, and so he really had no family left at all.

That was one accident that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

*

The public astounds me with their desire to see blood and bodies. I worked a bad wreck one time, and within fifteen minutes after I arrived, there were two hundred people milling around. The rescue squad couldn't get through for the crowd.

I got so pissed off that I tried to set up a barricade with a rope. But people kept coming through. I couldn't even
push 
them back.

Finally I yelled “You S.O.B.'s get out of the way!”

It made me furious because I believe that at a time like that, everyone should show a little respect.

*

You never forget your first fatality. That night, I had turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway and met a brown Mercury coming off a ramp. The driver was an elderly man and the passenger was his wife. As I went across a bridge, I heard the sound of air horns blowing on a tractor-trailer rig. I turned around and was heading [back] in the direction I came [from] when I saw the back end of the tractor trailer sitting in the middle of the road. The front end was over a bank.

The old man and woman had pulled out in front of the rig and been hit.

I jumped out of the patrol car and, using my radio, called the police and told them to get us some medical help
fast.

The truck driver had gotten out of his rig and was running toward the couple when I got to them. We found the old man under the steering wheel, dead. The woman was leaning toward him. The impact had crushed the car against her side.

When I moved her away from the steering wheel, I could tell she was hurt real bad. As she looked up, you could almost see the words, “Help me, help me,” in her eyes.

I called to the truck driver, “What can we do?”

He shook his head.

“I don't know,” he said.

Neither of us had the equipment or the skills needed to save
her. I knew the ambulance would be there, but
when
?

I held onto her for about five minutes, talking to her, trying to reassure her. She was looking up at me the whole time. Then all of a sudden she closed her eyes and went limp. She was gone.

That accident happened twenty-five years ago. But I still remember every single detail. And it still bothers me whenever I think about it.

Sometimes, the accidents troopers investigate are their own. Because of the nature of their work, they are at higher risk for auto accidents than many of the people they arrest. Since 1980, more than 225 North Carolina troopers have been involved in motor vehicle accidents while on duty. Some were seriously hurt or killed. These two officers were lucky:

It was raining hard that night and I was almost ready to get off duty when I saw one car coming around another one and begin to spin. The first thing I thought was, “Boy, that looks just like a race car spinning out of control.” My next thought was, “Oh no, he's gonna hit me!” I didn't even have time to look and see if anyone was behind me.

When the vehicle struck, my patrol car felt like it did a cartwheel, but actually it bounced up in the air and came down hard before sliding to the shoulder of the road.

I knew that drunks often survive an accident because they go limp, so I forced myself to slump down into the seat. When the patrol car came to rest, the window was gone and the rain was pouring in. Then I looked down and saw blood streaming from my face.

I thought, “Damn, I've broken my nose. Now I'm gonna be ugly for the rest of my life!”

About that time, an old man reached into the window, got me by the shoulder, and said, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well, do you know so-and-so?” he asked, starting up a conversation. I couldn't believe it. Here I was bleeding to death and he wanted to gossip.

Fortunately, an ambulance had passed earlier, seen the car spinning out of control, and turned around, in case there was an accident. I was bruised, had cuts in my mouth and other superficial
wounds, but wasn't injured too bad. The driver of the other car was unhurt. I charged him with no insurance or registration, driving on slick tires, and driving on a license that had been permanently revoked. He also had to pay me $250 for damages to personal property. I recovered with no problem but was out of work for a week. I could have stayed out longer but I wanted to get back on the road.

*

My accident happened the first night I was on patrol alone after my six weeks of training. I should have been home but I decided to work a few minutes past my shift.

I had pulled a car over for having no taillights and was about to get out of my patrol car when a drunk driver hit me from behind.

I remember my car door slamming back onto my leg and the next thing I knew, I was slumped over the steering wheel. I thought I had fallen asleep. I could hear people talking around me. Someone told me later that I kept asking if it was my fault. Was the accident my fault?

I had a fractured leg and a few other injuries. I was in the hospital a week and out of work for more than a month. The lady who hit me broke her leg, and the man in front of me hurt his back. She was charged with driving while impaired and having no insurance. But she never paid the fines because she skipped town. That's why I despise drunk drivers.

Not all accidents are caused by alcohol or carelessness. Many troopers believe that fate often plays a part, as it did in this case involving a young girl:

She was driving a new 300ZX and went off the road in Haywood County over a bank with a 125-foot vertical drop. A passing motorist saw the wreck and called the rescue squad.

By the time I arrived, there were three doctors at the scene. They worked hard to save her—she had a fractured neck, broken leg, internal injuries. We had a helicopter there from the local trauma center waiting for us to get her out of the wreckage.

When we put her on the chopper she had a weak pulse, but things had gone well, it seemed, and we were beginning to think our efforts had paid off.

I radioed the local police department to send someone to the
girl's home and notify her parents there had been an accident. Then I drove to the hospital so I could meet them there.

When they walked in the first thing the mother asked was, “Is my daughter alive?”

“At this point, she is,” I said, “but she's very seriously hurt and it's touch and go.”

I attended the same church as this family so I spent the next few minutes telling them to have faith in God, that everything was in His hands.

They seemed to be comforted from what I was saying. Then the emergency room doctor walked in and told them, “I'm sorry. She didn't make it.”

I thought, “What do you do? You try to console people and tell them everything is going to be all right, but you know it's
not
going to be all right. All you can do is be there for them.”

That night, I didn't sleep. I kept thinking of all the drunks I've seen who will never amount to anything, but who walk away from wrecks. Then someone like this girl—young, intelligent, with a promising future—gets wiped out. I know we should value all human life, but it's sometimes hard not to make judgments about those who live and those who die.

I've seen troopers laugh and make jokes about fatalities. I've done it myself. But it's a defense mechanism, a cover-up to disguise what we're really feeling. When you get home, that's when it hits you. You try to sleep and you can't, because what you've just seen—a person's death—goes through your mind over and over again.

I attended the girl's funeral. I guess I needed to be there to make it clear in my own head that it was over, she was gone. I was standing at the back of the church, trying not to be noticed, when the mother looked up and saw me.

She came straight toward me, put her arms around me, and hugged me. People turned and stared. I kept wishing I was somewhere else because she wouldn't let go. I didn't know what to do, so I put my arms around her.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for doing everything you did to help save my daughter. I hope God is always with you in your work and keeps you safe.”

She did more to help me in those few seconds than I was ever
able to do for her. We didn't save a life, but we tried. And that's what being a public servant is all about—doing the best we can for the people we represent. Having people appreciate what we do—appreciate that we try—can make up for a lot of the bad things that happen on the road.

“Well, I'll just prove that I'm not drunk. I'll stand here on my head in front of the courthouse!” —
Sixty-four-year-old man on his way to the breathalyzer room with a trooper

Not everything that happens on patrol involves trauma and tragedy. Sometimes the job has its humorous, though somewhat bizarre, moments. Experienced troopers even come to expect odd behavior from people they encounter on the road. Many highway patrol veterans say that nothing surprises them anymore. One patrol officer, a trooper for seventeen years, puts it more bluntly. “People are just damn crazy,” he says.

All of the following incidents are true:

Me and another trooper were riding down the road one night when we passed a pickup truck. We thought we spotted a child in the vehicle with an axe sticking out of its back.

I said, “Jesus Christ, Ron, they've killed a kid!”

“Aw, come on, it's Halloween,” said Ron. “It's got to be a prank.”

“Let's stop them and make sure.”

So we got them to pull over and I walked up to the driver. About the time I got to him, he jumped out of the truck, raised his arms, and bared two white fangs at me. He had on a black cape, white powder on his face, and this red stuff squirting out of his mouth. It startled me so much that I drew my weapon and told him not to come any closer. Then I heard someone in the truck laughing. Turns out that both her and “Dracula” were sheriff's deputies on their way to a Halloween party.

We made jokes about it all night, but I'll have to admit, it scared the hell out of me at the time.

*

I clocked the car speeding at eighty miles per hour, walked up to the driver, and said, “Ma'am, can I see your driver's license?” I noticed she was wearing a miniskirt, hose, high heels, and makeup. But when I looked at the license, it had a man's name and picture on it.

Sitting next to the driver was a male dressed in a suit and tie. I asked the driver to come back to my patrol car. As “she” got of the car, I realized “she” was a “he.” By that time I was totally confused.