The Simon family has decided to follow God's calling to adopt a little girl from Albania. Read more about our journey here.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Hit and Run

Today I was involved in a three-car hit and run accident.  Everyone is okay.  Here is the story.

I had just dropped Alan off at daycare and was on my way to work.  I was sitting in the right lane at a red light heading westbound on Holcomb Bridge Rd at Terramont.  There was a car in front of me and a car behind me at the light.  All of a sudden, a black pickup truck comes full speed (probably 45-50 mph) and slams into the car behind me, pushing her into me.  He backs the truck up (as if he was backing out of a parking space), then drives over the curb and passes us on the right on the grass.  He turns right onto Terramont and speeds down the road.  When the light turns green a few seconds after the truck sped off, a car next to us turned in front of us down Terramont to try to catch the truck.  The car in front of me, the car behind me, and I pulled over onto Terramont to get out of the Holcomb Bridge traffic.  The truck that hit us was nowhere in sight.  I get out of the car to go see if the woman behind me is okay.  As I'm walking back to her car, the truck reappears, heading toward us.  The driver, a white male in his 40s who looked like a smoker (you know how people who have smoked for a long time seem to have  more leathery skin as they get older) and was wearing a red baseball cap and a white shirt, looks me in the eye, sorta waves at me with his finger, then continues past to the Terramont/Holcomb Bridge intersection.  Without stopping, he turns right onto Holcomb Bridge and speeds off.  I continue back to the car behind me to see if the woman inside is okay.  She says she's shaken, but she isn't badly hurt.  I went to look at the damage to the back of her car.  The trunk had completely collapsed like an accordion.  The glass in the back window was completely gone.  I could tell there was a stroller in her trunk.  I went back to the car and peeked inside.  A toddler was in a car seat in the back seat.  Thankfully, the little girl seemed okay.



At this point, a few other cars have pulled over.  A young lady who saw everything wrote her information down and gave it to me.  She had gotten the tag number (AUX9675) and had already called it in.  Another witness stopped and said that her husband worked for the police department and that she would stay to ensure they had her information so they could contact her if they needed more witnesses.  She also gave us her information.

I took a look at the front of my car, because I wasn't 100% sure I hadn't been pushed into the car in front of me, but there wasn't a scratch on the front of my car.  There wasn't anything indicating that the car in front of me had been hit either.  We must not have made contact.

About 5-10 minutes after the accident occurred the police came.  They had us recount the story and got our information.  The police asked the woman who was driving the car in front of me if she felt anything.  She said she feels a little strange in her lower back and that she hear some crashes, but wasn't really sure if she got hit.

One of the witnesses and I went over to Holcomb Bridge to pull some of the other car's (car that was behind me) bumper and other pieces of her car out of the road and onto the grass.  Two tow trucks showed up shortly afterwards.  One of the tow truck guys took a look at my car.  The bumper was sticking into the tire slightly, and he couldn't get it to stay off the tire.  So he pulled the bumper the rest of the way off and put it in my backseat so I would be able to drive.



The other tow truck got ready to take the car behind me.  They drove the car slowly onto the bed of the tow truck.  The passenger rear wheel wasn't even turning.  The car basically was dragging the rear end with it.

The police finished writing the report and had us fill out a form with a statement about what happened with as many details about the pickup truck and driver as possible.  The police officer told the woman in front of me that he couldn't include her as being involved in the accident, but would put her as a witness.  (He told us later that he knew she hadn't been involved when she started talking about medical things rather than the impact of the crash, and also that a witness had told him that she hadn't gotten hit.)

After the car behind me had been towed, I took the woman and the little girl (luckily I had Alan's car seat that she could ride in) back to her apartment, which was just a light east of us on Holcomb Bridge.  I found out that the girl is about Alan's age - she turns two in November.  She was such a trooper!  She didn't cry or fuss at all, and she waited patiently while her mom filled out the paperwork and waited for the police officer to finish his report.

I'm thankful to God that everyone is okay.  I can't believe how well that Nissan Altima of hers held up.  That truck hit her HARD, and the back seat didn't even look like it had been affected.  If that had been me, I'm pretty sure the Bob stroller in the back of my car would have been in my front seat without a truck to take the brunt of the blow.

1 comment:

  1. WOW!!!! I am SO glad everyone was okay!!!!

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