I just saw a dead body for the first time in my life.

To quote from my police report (modified and expanded where I have remembered more details since):

April 25, 2003

At approximately 12:45 am, I was driving west on Beddington Trail. Ahead of me, maybe 300 metres, I saw what I first thought was a lamp post falling onto the road. The light at the top of the post flashed and went dark, and I saw other flashes of light near the bottom of the post. Worried that I would hit it, I slowed down and watched the road carefully. Thinking about it now, I remember that there was another car ahead of me in the right-hand lane travelling faster than I was, and I worried that he would hit the fallen lamp post, but when nothing bad seemed to happen to him, I guessed that maybe it hadn't fallen after all. I also noticed that about eight more lamp posts had gone dark past the one I thought had fallen. When I got closer, I saw a car on its side beside the lamp post, folded almost in half. I stopped my car, got out, and ran over. I didn't even check for traffic as I crossed this major roadway. The overturned vehicle was on the opposite side of a two-foot high concrete barrier, next to the lamp post, which was leaning about ten degrees, with no remains of a light at all at the top. I could smell gasoline strongly in the air, but I didn't see any flame, so I wasn't worrired about that -- I was more concerned with victims. When I got there, I first looked inside the car, and was surprised to see no one. The front seats were completely visible to me, with a mostly inflated airbag on the driver's side, but no sign of any people. Then I looked down and saw the victim, apparently a hispanic male (hard to say for sure in the dark), in his early twenties or late teens. He had a black goatee. His eyes were closed at first, but he was moaning softly and moving one of his hands a bit. I started shouting questions at him: "What's your name? Was anyone else in the vehicle?" He didn't respond. Every time another car drove by, I tried to wave them down by standing in the road waving both arms above my head. About ten cars drove by before one finally stopped. In the meantime, I continued yelling at the victim not to move, and I prayed for him.

When another vehicle finally stopped, I ran across to where he was and asked if he had a cell phone. The large black man with a look of horrified shock on his face said that he did, and I told him to call an ambulance and the police immediately. We went back to the site of the accident, as he called, and I gave him directions on where to tell the emergency services we were, since he didn't seem to know the names of the roads or the directions. (As it turns out, I was little off on the directions too.) The victim was more active now. He was initially lying with his back flat on the ground and his neck tilted almost ninety degrees, resting on the frame of the car window. When he started to move, his right hand (which was right next to the fractured but still connected windshield) moved along the edge of the glass, and he started trying to lift himself up to straighten his neck. I yelled at him to hold still, but he refused to listen, and I moved in and tried to hold his chest steady so he wouldn't try to move anymore.

The third man on the scene came and helped me try to stabilize the victim's neck. He immediately said that he could smell alcohol on the victim's breath. It was about this time that I noticed the second victim. I could see one bare foot and a calf, sticking out from directly under the front left wheel of the car. Since the car was on its side, this meant that the entire weight of the engine was on this person. I got scared.

I went around to the other side of the vehicle to look for the upper body. It was hard to see anything on this side, but I found a head, upper body, and one arm. I couldn't even tell if it was a boy or a girl, but it appeared to be a caucasian, with blonde hair, about chin length. He or she looked very calm and serne, even though I could see some blood. I started shouting, hoping to get any sort of a response, but there was no motion, no words, no reaction.

I went back around to the other side of the vehicle, and somehow, I ended up holding the first victim again. Police arrived shortly after. This first victim was much more active now, saying that his back was f***ed up, complaining that it and his neck hurt, that he couldn't feel his back, that he could breath, pleading with me to get him out of there. He kept trying to get up, but I put a hand under his shoulder and another on his chest to keep him as still as possible. While I was doing this, I was telling police everything I knew about the other victim (which wasn't much). The police left me to continue holding the first victim until EMS arrived. I asked him again things like his name, and how many people were in the vehicle, again with no responses. I kept reassuring him that EMS was on its way, and that he would be OK, and that he should try not to move, because it could make things worse. I had one leg over his body, and I was shaking violently.

Once EMS arrived, they asked some questions about the victims, then moved in to put an air mask on the first victim. They asked his name, and he said something like "Dwayne", which was what they called him. They had me continue to hold him still until they were ready with the spine board, and then I was replaced with an EMS technician.

As I moved away from the victim, I overheard police asking about the various people on the scene. They were talking about one guy who had not been first on the scene, nor seen the accident. I stepped forward and told them that I had been both the witness, and the first on the scene.

One of the officers asked me if I was OK, and when I told him I was, he took me back to a squad car and asked if I could start filling out a statement. I agreed, and he set me up in the back of the car with a clipboard, pen, and Collision Statement form. I noticed a lot of blood on both of my hands, and I wasn't sure that I was uninjured (I certainly wouldn't have noticed any cuts on my hands at that point, since I had been roughed up a bit but touching glass and metal several times) so I asked for something to clean up with just to make sure. The officer gave me some cleaning alcohol, and I cleaned off my hands fairly thoroughly.

It took me two full pages to state everything I had to say. While this was going on, I learned from listening to the police and EMS (from inference, mainly) that a "thirty-two" is a dead victim. Several people asked if there were two thirty-twos, and were told only one, under the car, and another one still alive.

When I thought I was done, another officer thanked me and asked if I could fill in a few more details on my report that I had missed the first time, such as my descriptions of the victims. Then he thanked me and told me I could go home.

As I was in my car, getting ready to drive away, a reporter came up and knocked on my window. I rolled it down, and he asked if I had witnessed the accident. I told him everything I could think of (mostly the same stuff as was in my police report, along with a couple of details I had forgotten at first and didn't seem too important to the police report anyway). When we were done, he got my name and thanked me before running off, because it looked like the traffic cops were going to ask him to move his car. I gave him my business card before he left, and he chatted with me briefly about where I worked. He asked me how old I was, and I told him, mentioning that my birthday had been on Wednesday. I found it funny that both he and the cop had asked me if I was on my way home from work, and I told them both that I was coming home from a friend's place down in Evergreen. I looked at the clock in my car as I drove away, and realized that I had spent a little over an hour at the accident scene.

Tonight was the latest I have ever stayed at cell group, by more than an hour. I can't help but wonder how much of a coincidence it was. I have no idea how long it would have been before somebody stopped if I hadn't been waving people down. The accident wasn't especially obvious in the dark unless one happened to notice the lamp post or look directly at the spot.

I stopped shaking before I got home, but I still feel tense all over. When I got home, I checked the mail as per my normal routine, and grabbed flyers from the mailbox at the door on my way in, but once inside, everything routine vanished from my mind. As I was taking my shoes off, I noticed a large clump (six inches in diameter or so) of burrs and grasses stuck to my pant leg. I half-heartedly tried to remove them, but they wouldn't come, so I gave up and took off my shoes. I carried everything I had with my upstairs, including my coat (which would normally be hung up at the door) and the flyers and mail (normally go into the living room). Once in my room, I went through a few routine things -- messaging friends who I thought might still be awake, checking email, reading online journals. Then I pulled the burrs off my leg, and moticed the blood on my pants. I realized that all the blood I had encountered had been very thick -- not at all like fresh blood that I am used to.

Then I sat down to type this. Now it's quarter to three in the morning, and I am still so wide awake, hot, sweaty, and sticky, that I don't think I'll be asleep for a while. Maybe if I take a shower...

I still plan to go to work tomorrow. I don't know if I'll be on time. I think I'll call right now, just to warn them.

Don Monkey