Night of Horrors

One certainly never goes into an evening expecting someone to die* in their front yard, but sadly last night it happened to me.

It all happened just before 11:00 PM. motiondemon and I were just about to finish watching his DVD of 'The Maltese Falcon' when we heard a loud noise outside. At first I thought it was a loud clap of thunder, as it had been raining earlier that day, but we decided to run outside to see what had happened.

It was hard to tell what was going on at first aside from a wreck, as the headlights were shining right at me as I went up the driveway, but things looked bad -- there was a totaled, white Lincoln Navigator at the top of our yard. motiondemon was talking to two men who had stopped in the road and seemed to yelling the driver's name and saying they knew him, but as motiondemon began to call the police, they jumped in their car and rushed off. We got their licence plate number, reported it on the call, and then figured that was the driver fleeing the scene.

Sadly, we were wrong.

About 45 minutes passed of neighbors coming and going (many of whom seemed to know the driver -- his [nick]name was Boone, apparently) and checking the scene for all the damage (the railing in the road outside the house, a huge cable junction box, part of some trees, etc. were badly damaged -- motiondemon is gonna send me pics, as the ones we took last night didn't come out), the police finally arrived.

When he got out of his car, the officer sort of joked about 'if this was the place of the accident' and 'maybe the car was just a new fangled yard ornament' and, being someone who tends to use humor myself when I'm stressed, replied 'Yeah, some people like garden gnomes, but we thought a crushed Lincoln Navigator would be a nice change'. We told him how we thought the driver had done a runner, because at least two neighbors said they couldn't see anyone in the car with their flashlights, but within moments, the officer found someone in the car --

Slumped over across the seats, headfirst into the passenger's foot well, was the driver.

We were astonished and freaked that there had been someone in there the whole time. I'd even just joked about the accident and many of us neighbors had been chatting just about 10 feet from the wrecked car! My heart completely sank. All I could think of was that perhaps we could have saved him (and that thought haunted me through an evening of sleeping in fits and starts -- what if that man was conscious at least part of that time? He was probably beyond saving, but still).

The officer seemed to not be too upset, but we did have to move further away from the scene as he called in medical help. Within minutes we had several fire trucks, an ambulance, and then -- upon us showing an officer the crushed junction box that seemed to be live (it was making a few 'popping' noises) -- utility trucks out on the road outside our place. Things were chaos after that, so I made sure to let justben know to park at our neighbor's when he got home (he was soon on his way). As we watched them get the body from the car (which took quite a bit of work -- he'd slammed into two trees at the end and the vehicle was heavily battered), it looked like he might be dead. It was hard to see from where we were, but the way they were handling him (no use of the neck brace they pulled out, taking their time to leave, etc), things looked bad.

Eventually we went back inside and said we'd talk to any officers or detectives about what we knew (which was honestly very little -- they did talk with motiondemon briefly, since he made the 911 call). justben came home and we were all a bit shell-shocked (well, me at least -- I was a mess). We stayed up for a few hours afterward (the police and then utility crew were there way into the night), but then eventually all tried to go to bed (motiondemon ended up just crashing here because getting out of our driveway would have been a mess, especially between the crime scene and debris/glass everywhere).

Sleep was hard for me. Not only could I not stop thinking about how different the accident could have been -- there was no real major damage to our property (the railing and junction box belong to the city, for example), but had the car not hit the junction box or just turned in a different way, he would have likely totaled one or both of our cars or even hit the house. There were no skid marks and it looks like he was going very fast, so the damage would have been severe. No, more than that, all I could think of was that man that was in the car, worrying that he had been alive as we all stood around assessing the scene, maybe unable to cry out for help. He was likely unconscious, if not dead immediately (wearing no seatbelt and that hard of an impact should have surely killed him), and even if he'd had an ambulance, he might not have made it. But that worry is niggling at me.

It's almost all I could think/dream about last night.

Anyway, motiondemon had somewhere he needed to be this morning, so we just got up and looked at things this morning and cleared out the driveway from him to leave (when they towed the car out, they left a lot of debris from having to practically dig it out of the yard). As I said motiondemon took some pics (though the junction box was replaced -- even if they left bits of the old one in the yard), but it's nothing compare to the horror of last night. :(

The only real thing on my agenda today is to work an event at my job from 7:00-10:00 tonight, so I think I'm going to try and get some more sleep and hope for the best. It's all really hard to process and I'm still a bit freaked out (I kept having panic attacks all night as well, which really sucked). I'm hoping it will pass soon.

*sigh* I just hope Hermes (or some other psychopomp) was there to help Boone along to where he needed to be. :(




*This was never confirmed to us, but as mentioned above, the evidence as things progressed looks like he was probably dead on impact (or very soon afterward).