Friday, June 11, 2010

Fatal Wreck...

0526_loc_Accident1
I personally hate covering car accidents and luckily unless it's something big I rarely ever do anything more than listen to them on the police scanner. When this one got called out, however, it was called as a motorcycle vs. wheelchair. it was interesting enough and a pretty slow night and almost time to go home so the cops reporter and I went to check it out. As we were driving over there it wasn't sounding like this was going to turn out too well. The road it happened on was closed off and I found a side road a little over a quarter mile away and we walked in. As we were walking it it was incredibly dark and then I noticed a man kneeling down and covering his face, it was one of those things that I just shot out of habit. When I was shooting tie photo I didn't even notice the wheelchair off to the left, I was kind of getting blinded by the headlights of the police car, which was also the only lightsource I had. After I walked up not only did I notice the wheelchair was in three pieces but I later found out the guy kneeling was the driver of the car. The man in the wheelchair later died at the hospital. It's one of those tragic stories I never want to cover, however, it's also a story that needs to be reported. The driver of the car was not charged. The road was pitch black, there were no streetlights and no shoulder to drive the wheelchair on, and the speed limit on the road was 55mph. It was pretty much a recipe for disaster.

1 comment:

Allen Sullivan said...

Horrible situation, but great storytelling image.