Looking Mortaity in the Eyeposted Jul 30th 2007, 6:47PM
Mood: Discouraged
Saturday afternoon I had the chance to stare mortality in the eye.
We were driving back from Tunica on 61. We had crossed the state line and were in the bottle neck section of the road almost to where the buildings start again.
About 50 yards in front of us a back SUV slowly drifted off the right hand edge of the road and into the ditch. Anyone who knows this stretch of road knows that the ditches along the sides are like cliffs. As the SUV hit the dirt it pulled them down onto the steep part of the ditch. The driver tried to get themselves back up... just in time to T-Bone a telephone pole directly in the passenger side door doing something around 40+ mph.
The pole sheared off in TWO places, bringing down power lines onto the road. The SUV went clear THROUGH the poll. The force was such that a small child (8 ish) was thrown from the vehicle, landing in the middle of the highway directly in front of us and was almost crushed by the still moving SUV.
Those of us that witnessed the shocking wreck pulled to the side and ran back to offer any help that we could, calling 911 and trying to keep everyone calm. There were 3 young children in this truck, none of them were belted in. The one boy who was thrown had an obviously broken arm and leg. A young girl was complaining of pain "inside" and a third was still trapped in the back seat with his foot trapped under a seat. The driver was still conscious, but trapped in the driver seat.
The force of the impact was such that the roof of the passenger side of the truck was crushed down to the level of the gear shift. Thank the lord that nobody was in the front seat. If they had been... there would have been no hope.
At the time the cops let the witnesses go, everyone was still alive, and I pray that everyone will be OK.
I'm passing this along to my friends and associates because after two days, I still can not get the vision of a small child flying through the air and hitting the pavement in front of me and struggling to drag themselves with a broken arm and leg out of the middle of the road.
It's haunting me.
If you have children, siblings, nieces etc... be sure they are seat belted in.
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