Bad Day

We came back from Blacksburg today after another alumni weekend. There were over 100 alumni there as we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Virginia Tech chapter of Zeta Psi. We had a great time as usual.

The bad day part was today. On the way to Blacksburg on Friday, we had such a horrible time with the traffic on I-64 and I-81 that we decided to take US-460 back home. About an hour into our trip, we drove up to an intersection and noticed some shredded tires in the road and a tractor trailer on the side of the road. At first I thought he just blew a tire, but then I noticed a Jeep Wagoneer on the side of the road facing the wrong way with gasoline and oil leaking out of it.

And then both Monica and I noticed the woman lying on the side of the road.

I stopped the car immediately, and Monica jumped out and ran over to assess the woman’s condition. I pulled the car over on the side of the road and talked to a bystander who said that the paramedics were called. I was making my way over to Monica when I noticed two other people on the side of the road. There were several people around them, and I saw that there was one woman who was conscious and one man who was also conscious but bleeding from his head.

I walked over to Monica, and she said that she was unable to find a pulse on the elderly woman and that one pupil was pinpoint and the other was completely dilated. I looked at her face, and I saw her eyes were open but she was unresponsive. There was one woman there that said she knew her, and she kept calling her name but there was never an answer.

The paramedics and fire fighters arrived within a few minutes. One came over to the elderly woman on the ground, checked her pulse, then walked away while saying, “She’s dead.” I figured this was the case, but to have him officially confirm it freaked me out a bit.

I walked past the other two people who were being looked at by the paramedics and just stood on the side of the road. Monica saw that the everyone was being taken care of so we decided to get back in the car and continue on home.

I haven’t been able to get the empty stare of the elderly woman out of my head all day. Seeing a dead woman on the side of the road has just freaked me out. I’ve seen two other dead people in my life but that was at funerals. To see this poor woman just lying there like that was just weird and has given me a heavy heart the rest of the day.

I looked on the Roanoke Times site for information about the accident, and I found it here.