Recollection #1 October of 1997

 

The first time I ever watched someone get killed I was 16. It was at the hands of my mother.

 

When I was 16 my mother was involved and a deadly car accident she hit a 68-year-old man named Joseph May. He had never driven a day in his life she hit him head-on with me in the front seat and two of my brothers in the back.

 

On this particular day, my mother, my brother, and I had just picked up my youngest brother from school. As we left the school the same way we did nearly every day before that, we came to a  very steep down-ward hill that dead-ended into an intersection at a blinking red light. The cross traffic had yellow blinking lights as the intersection is just ahead of a curve. As we approach the red blinking lights all of us notice something peculiar. Directly on the other side of the intersecting road, there is a set of train tracks. To all of our surprise on this day it had a train on it. We sat there in amazement as we watched the train come closer to where we were. We all had lived in that area our entire lives. I’m not sure what the schedule is for this particular track but none of us could ever recall seeing a train on those tracks before. My mother slowly makes the right turn as the train is almost to the same point on the road that we are and we start accelerating catching up to the front of the train that has now passed us. The speed limit on this road is 35 mph. My best guess is that we were going around 40mph, sort of racing with the train that we're still in shock from seeing.

 

About a mile ahead is the stop sign. To the left of the stop sign and on the otherside of the train tracks is an industrial plant that makes truck rims. Directly ahead of the stop sign, a small extension of a parking lot - with three tractor truck beds in a row preventing any vehicle from passing them. The parking lot extension was connected to a dirt parking area reserved for the printing mill just to the right of the stop sign. To the far right of the stop sign and for a block in our direction is an open parking lot lined with trees. This location happens to be a few blocks away from a hospital and schools within walking distance - all which let out at 3. From the scene burned into my menory from  that day I can only guess it must have been about 3:15 or 3:10. People were EVERYWHERE.  

 

I remember getting caught in a trance from the blinking red train lights about 1/2 a mile ahead of us on the left, warning pedestrians of the oncoming train. Suddenly, my mother squeezes my arm.  First I glance at my arm where she was clenching it and then I looked at her prepared to say“what are you doing? That hurts.” As I look up to meet her gaze I discovered it was the most terrified -blood drained from her face - look, I have ever seen. A look of Horror I had never seen before and haven’t seen since in her eyes. I must have looked confused because she frantically but softly mumbled “The break!” and she pierced the pedal on the floor with her eyes , as if to force it to work with her mind. The pedal was smashed all the way to the ground. It wasn't budging.

 

I tried to compute the events that were unfolding as quickly as I could. The moment I saw the pedal on the floor, I instantly saw the train on the tracks to our left, then the semi-truck trailers ahead of us, the hundreds of pedestrians walking about, and my mother’s car was not stopping at all. My mother was frantically attempting to lift the brake pedal up with her foot, to no avail. I suppose she thought if she could get it up it may work the next time she pumped it - it never came back up off the floor.

 

I Didn’t think about the things I did next. They happened over a matter of seconds, and to this day I can’t tell you exactly why I made the choices I did. I can only say these are the choices I made that day.

 

I immediately instructed both of my brothers to get out of their seatbelts. The brother closest in age to me attempted to ask me why and I barked at him “ Just DO IT!!!”
 

I instructed them to get down behind each my mother’s and my seats. During this time my mother was attempting to pull the emergency brake but the car just started making a ticking noise. She threw the car in park but the car did not stop, the ticking noise continued. I rolled down my window and started frantically screaming for everyone to “Get out of the way”. What happened next seemed to go in slow motion...