With a broken clavicle and a dislocated right ankle, he managed to crawl to the shoulder of the road. He gasped in desperate need for air as his breathing became even more labored. Blood gushed from the gaping wound on his ankle as he laid on the ground helpless. His Volkswagen Passat had just crashed into a semi-trailer on the ever-busy interstate 85 from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond, Virginia.
Seconds after the ghastly accident occurred, concerned motorists alighted from their vehicles in sheer wonderment. As people talked into their cellphones, traffic began to build up. A middle-aged man struggled to describe the scene to a 911 operator. “He is unresponsive at this point…there is blood everywhere,” the fidgety man shrieked as if he were having a nervous breakdown. Another perturbed fellow scanned the accident environs in search of any important valuable that might be laying around. The men who checked the victim’s vehicle to see that no one was trapped heaved a sigh of relief when they learned that the driver was alone, and that no child was in the car.
Just beside the victim’s vehicle were a broken cellphone, a bunch of keys, a vacuum flask, and two miniature vaporizers. The windshield of the Passat had taken a serious hit, thus, leaving a rain of glass clutter all over the place. Two other individuals dug into the motionless man’s denim pants and found a leather wallet, which contained an expired New York driver license, one health insurance card, two credit cards, a couple of business cards, and a few blue-inked paper stickers that were meticulously folded into halves.
What felt like eternity had passed before the wail of a fire truck was heard. Before long, more police vehicles pulled up at the scene. Three officers spoke with some of the first responders, while others were controlling traffic, constantly motioning the snooping crowd to stay away from the scene. Paramedics gently lifted the unresponsive man and placed him on a stretcher, where prehospital care was momentarily administered. One of the physicians reached for a stethoscope and another dabbed the man’s bloodied face with a cloth. The taillight of the ambulance continued to dim as it darted off, cutting through the dense highway traffic.
As the ambulance made its way to the nearest hospital with the badly injured man, police officers spoke with the men who had recovered the victim’s belongings. Following a quick questioning, the men handed the items to the police and went about their businesses. The semi-trailer driver told the police that it appeared the victim was on his phone when the accident occurred. He maintained that he (the truck driver) was driving at a safe speed when he heard a loud clatter that shook his truck. The fast-talking, 57-year-old Alabamian trucker said that when he looked out of his truck window, he saw flying debris and quickly pulled to a safe distance. “I turned off my engine and proceeded to find out what had happened,” he added. The quasi-interrogation lasted for about half an hour, after which the truck driver was carted away in a police vehicle.
By the time traffic had unclogged, it was past dusk.