Raw, but c*nsored blabbing and blogging of a young journalista
and local news producer in Southern New England.
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Saturday, April 30, 2005

Eyewitness Account

This was just a little before two in the morning on 95 southbound; a stretch of the highway just below the Providence Public Safety Complex, between exits 19 and 20.

At first I smelled smoke and thought there was a fire going on. I looked ahead of me and saw in the air an enormous cloud of haze. Suddenly I realized that there was something below the hazy cloud, and that's when I saw it at first.

A dark bluish-colored Ford or Mercury station wagon was straddling the two right lanes. From the car a figure in all black dashed like lightning -- leaping -- towards the median between the two halves of the highway, darting between cars. By that point I was pulling up in front of the disabled wagon and noticed a human on the ground next to it, on the right side of the car.

This man turned out to be a black man, about 5'8" or 5'9", perhaps 175 pounds. Though my windows were closed and I was still several meters away I could hear him screaming for help as he lay on the tiny bits of shattered glass.

One, then two, then three, maybe four cars stopped next to me, pulled properly off to the right side of the road. Young women in their 20s immediately got out and tried to help the man. A car or two of a man dressed in a suit but without a tie, and a young man and another older woman all stopped after the disabled car and were among those assisting.

I sat in my car and just stood there watching for several minutes. I turned on my blinkers and decided I had, or I could, just stay there and block traffic. Hoping, of course, that I didn't get hit in my own right, idiot.

I called 911. It took several rings to answer. I said to myself why is it taking so long? Of course I wasn't the only one who would be calling about this. When a call taker picked up I was asked if it was a fire, police or medical emergency. "Medical, I guess," I said. "I'm on 95 southbound in Providence, Rhode Island," not knowing if my 617 area coded cell phone would go to another state even in these enlightened times, "and I'm between exit 19 and 20..."

I was told that crews were on the way there and we both rang off.

Then I called the station of course. As I was describing it I could hear in the background the scanners talking about it. The producer on the desk said she had heard of a rollover at the Thurbers Avenue curve, but this couldn't be it, I said.

Stringers were out and would be on scene shooting within minutes. I tried to do a "memory dump" down the phone and describe the scene but it didn't quite work. I said goodbye and hung up.

Before me the random eyewitnesses had inquired of the man's health and figured out they needed to move him out of the road. In a group they picked him up and moved him off into the breakdown lane. I said to myself, half to them, "I wouldn't move him! He might have broken bones....!"

After a minute fire trucks started coming down the highway behind me. I pulled off a little ways but continued to stay in a position where I would be blocking the scene in front of me.

Firefighters started to get out of the trucks and survey the damage. Soon after an ambulance pulled up and EMTs came out and started working on the man.

I looked at the people surrounding the man, and looked at my car in the position it was in -- unscathed -- and worried I might be looked at as a potential witness -- or perpetrator. I couldn't just pull off and leave! I'd better get out and do something.

I turned off the engine, but then turned it back on again, and then realized I needed to turn the car off and leave it there. I don't even know if I locked the car.

I walked up to try to be helpful, but what do you do? I wasn't responsible. I didn't do anything to be helpful. All I could do was just kind of walk up, and look, and watch, and wait for someone to ask me a question.

That, of course, wasn't happening. Tall firefighters of every shape, size, experience, were milling about.

The victim, himself, was at least talking. Likely in shock. Delirious? "Miss, miss," he said, tugging at the pant leg of a woman who had been close to him, trying to help, one of the first responders -- or rather, eyewitnesses.

I asked one firefighter if it was a hit and run. He said they didn't know what happened. My guess is the victim could answer that question once he's in a position to.

The car itself was practically totalled. The whine of the car's horn had been resounding while the man screamed before me as I first pulled closer to the wagon and the one man flew across lanes of traffic. Now it was quieted. The rear driver's side wheel was totally off the car; if there ever was a tire on it, it was no longer there. The passenger side airbag deployed. Perhaps the impact was on the passenger's side of the front end.

Some firefighters had opened pails of some powdery material and were tossing it out on the gasoline and other fluids spilled over the highway.

Perhaps it was about this time that the EMTs picked the man up and put him on a backboard. I winced visibly; I could feel the unknown pain.

Then I looked up above the highway. As I stood feet from the group of crew members treating the man, unable or unwilling to get seriously involved, I saw the stringers: Mark Parsons facing Pawtucket and his cohorts; David Dicarlo and his ponytail next to his professional-looking camera on a tripod, and another figure. Looking, for some intents and purposes, like the Three Wise Men. But in reality far from it of course.

"Oh, God," I said out loud, dreadfully.

Only now did I make the connection.

At first I thought the car had been hit by another. But eventually I started wondering if it was a rollover somehow -- coming down from a street above? Or, now that I think about it, could it simply have been a violent turn in the middle of the highway that brought it on?

I asked one of the young women if she or anyone else had seen the figure running across the highway. Apparently, according to her, he had been connected or assisted or something like that. I suppose he filed a report, perhaps?

One firefighter with a handlebar mustache asked the young woman if she was involved in the accident. "No," she said, "we all just stopped once we saw it."

This same young woman had been treated at the scene for what might have been a minor cut from lifting the man. Or possibly just exposure to his blood. I saw a medical technician pouring some kind of liquid from a bottle onto her hand -- perhaps to simply wash it or sterilize it. Rubbing alcohol?

"You don't need to stay," said the firefighter with the handlebar mustache, trying to make her feel better.

By now the man on the backboard was on a stretcher and being loaded into the ambulance. Firefighters expecting more continued to mill about looking at debris in the road, the car's hood up, what was underneath the hood, how it had been affected.

Two other young women were now trying to figure out whose car was whose from their far-away vantage point. Well, if that's your car, maybe I can drive out by the edge, and that sort of thing.

"I'm in the green car," I volunteered. Finally a place where I could do something -- LEAVE!

Three or four of us moved back to our cars. Two firefighters came with us to stop traffic and let us in.

"Are you all set?" one man in the protective pants and blue shirt said through my closed window.

I think I nodded.

He and another fireman, who was also wearing the protective coat, put up their hands to the coming cars. I wanted to offer him my flashlight to use as a beacon. But I didn't. It was a cheap thing I could replace. It was also something that if they needed it they'd probably have it.

We moved back into traffic and slowly returned to the flow down the highway. I wasn't even sure I wanted to drive over the tiny flecks of broken glass for fear of killing my own tires.

I feel so guilty and scared, even though I didn't do anything; I had nothing to do with it.

It crossed my mind, I think, and maybe I said it out loud too: Why does this sort of thing always happen in Providence?

Labels: Originally published

... Scribbled by Bill T ... 4/30/2005 03:20:00 AM ... Email this entry ...
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