Originally Posted by
Wannabe...
So we're headed up the interstate Saturday to Southaven. Just South of Hernando, I'm lazily cruising along at 70 mph when a 2 door explorer pulls along side of me to pass, about dead even with me, out of my peripheral vision, I get the sence that he's coming over on me in my lane....FAST! I snatched the wheel hard right and jerked my head over to see that he's in his lane oblivious to me and left me wondering if what I thought was happening really happened or if I just imagined it......plus justifying myself to Is and explaining that I too shart my shorts, so she shouldn't feel bad about it.
So, we continue on about another 2 miles. The Explorer was doing maybe 5 mph faster than me and had increased the distance between us to about 1/3 of a mile when all of the sudden he drifted onto the left shoulder, overcorrected hard right, then left which put him back on the shoulder and upon this correction in the grass ended up taking a 90 degree right turn and flew off the interstate at what I'd guess was 50+ mph down a steep embankment at which point I lost sight of him, but looked up to see the tops of a series of 50 ft pine trees shaking as if King Kong was coming through.
I hit the breaks and headed to the shoulder and purposely stopped short so we the wreckage could not be seen from the van and told the family "Stay here, do not get out and call 911" About 4 steps out of the car, I thought "what the heck am I doing?" Actually, I thought much more colorfully than that, but I'm already pushing it with the "shart" comment above, which was really funny, but I best not try anything else like that here. About 1/2 down the embankment, I look up to see the Explorer upside down, with a crushed roof and pointed back towards the interestate. I swallowed hard and glanced around looking for a a blood trail that would lead me to the bodies. One more step and I notice 2 Mexicans standing at the back of the SUV and I actually thought, "where'd they come from?" thinking they'd come through the woods.
I realized they'd climbed out, so I asked if there was anybody else in the car....they looked at me about like the guys at the restaurants when I tell them I don't want any green peppers. So started in with the hand signals and they indicated 2 more. Oh boy, now for the entrails part of my story. Gulp. So I made down the to the SUV and sure enough, there's 2 more. The driver is moving and the passenger is trapped with the hood crushed in on him and the seat reclined at such and angle I knew the roof broke the seat when it came in. So the driver no eblays neither and he's scrambling around to get right himself, get free and find a way out. He does and appears to be shaken up, but not a scratch on him.
About this time, other folks have stopped and made their way down including a retired EMT worker lady, her 5 month pregnant daughter, who's in the thick of it. An older black guy, a younger white guy and a highway worker complete with neon vest. OK, so now the EMT lady is telling us all not to touch anybody and is trying to take over the scene, but the young white guy and older black guy are basically ignoring her and she's getting ticked about it too, but she's distracted by her daughter in the frey. So the young white guy goes into the drivers side door after the passenger and the older black guy is standing there next to me on the passenger side. About this time, I realize the passenger is moving around and trying to free himself. The black guy says let's bend this door out of the way and we whoop on it to get it open. Then he says I think the seat belt is making it hard for him to breath, so I cut it. That freed the guy up some and gave him some more movement. With the help of the white guy inside, the driver going back in and releasing the seat some, they older Messican passenger kept wiggling and wiggling and finally freed himself basically under his own power. He was obviously dazed and had some cuts on his head from glass, but looked remarkably good and wasn't even bleeding much.
So now the EMT is trying to get him to lay down and all the while fretting about a head injury and how we all shouldn't have helped him out...yeah, I know she was right.
The action has now died down and the EMT asked me what happened as she was coming N to S and we were traveling S to N. As I'm telling here the story I go to point to the first 2 Messicans and they've vamoused. I looked around to see them standing back up on the Interstate talking and looking down at everything maybe 50 feet away. I found that really odd...the driver was obviouly concerned about the passenger, but the 2 rear seat passenger basically didn't even stick around to see what happened to the other two.
The road worker apparently works with a lot of mexicans and kept calling them all Amigos and called one of them back down to help translate to the guy on the ground. He had called a bi-lingual Amigo on his cell and gave the phone to one of the riders who instructed him to tell the older guy to lay down, which he did.
Another weird thing....all of them were wearing suits, but no ties....at 11AM on Saturday?
One last weird thing. When the older guy came out of the Explorer, he was clutching a pen. Dude just went off the interstate, hit 6 trees, was pinned upside down for 5 minutes and the whole time he never lets go of the pen. Weird.
I glanced around the car thinking I'd see a bale of marijuanna or some kilos of cocaine or a box of AR15s or something, or at least some busted up colt 45 bottles, but everthing looked normal....pocket change, a man's necklace, a magazine, a stuffed toy.
I gave my name and cell to the first officer there, but never heard from them for a statement.
Hernando FD responded and I started to stick around but remembered Feelay was in Columbus, so no chance of a lunch out of the deal, so I made my way back to the van and on to Southaven.
Dadgum, I swear when I headed down that hill I DID NOT WANT TO GO. I was expecting to see blood, guts and severed heads strewn all over that hillside.
Wannabe...
