saw a dead man today

**john turner** · #1 02-03-2010, 08:03 AM

on my way to taking my wife to work yesterday morning, passed a string of police cars in the turn lane of the 5 lane highway by my house. as we passed, there was a small mound covered by a tarp. a blue sleeve was sticking out, but i couldn't see anything else.

it was pretty obvious what it was, but this confirmed it...

http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/man-str...ar-288926.html
the awful thing was that this was -2 hours- after when the accident supposedly happened, according to the article. you'd have thought they would have moved him by then.

Yerf Dog · #2 02-03-2010, 08:06 AM

Quote:

He was wearing a blue Reebok jersey and camouflage pants.

Mark Latimour · #3 02-03-2010, 08:06 AM

Yeah, you don't quickly forget it. I have seen my share of (recently) dead bodies when travelling overseas. When I was in Morocco in 2008, I had the unfortunate luck of seeing 3 in three consecutive days. The first I say get killed (road accident) about 50m from me when I was walking along the street. It reminds you how quickly ones circumstances can change.

RWP · #4 02-03-2010, 08:08 AM

Wow that is sad. The poor guy that hit him will never be the same either. That kind of accident can happen to anyone even if you are a careful driver.

**john turner** · #5 02-03-2010, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yerf Dog

he was probably a transient/homeless person, that's why they are having a hard time identifying him. fashion was probably the last thing on his mind when he put those clothes on.

this was not too far from the junction of quite a few large interstates. there are a few homeless folks that wander the area further west - might have been hitching.

blendermassacre · #6 02-03-2010, 08:38 AM

So one of my domino's pizza low points was when a driver witnessed a drive by murder at a gas station. I had to go pick up his money so I could close the store. The police walked me past the body, covered in a white sheet. He had been laying in the rain for hours. It was pretty terrible. Hopefully you can set the thought in the back of your mind.

metron · #7 02-03-2010, 08:47 AM

That's sad. It can be pretty heavy to see. My cousin runs a funeral home and does embalming. I worked for him for a short time while in college. I couldn't take it!

Two guys in my band are Denver firefighters. Now those guys have stories. I don't know how they do what they do.

hover · #8 02-03-2010, 09:11 AM

wow John, sorry you had to witness that. Never easy. I had seen a deceased person on the Mass Pike (much the same scenario / being covered by a tarp) but my Wife was with me, and she hates riding that road... the deceased was effing around, racing someone in the opposite direction lanes, and his car ended upturned in our lanes over the barriers. A scary scene.

My Brother in law used to volunteer photog for the fire dept. I've seen some things....oh man.

MadMan118 · #9 02-03-2010, 09:21 AM

Deceased people never really bother me much these days. Having to transport them is a different story.

MatticusMania · #10 02-03-2010, 09:26 AM

When I was about 9 or 10 I was riding with my mom on the freeway. The freeway junction was closed so we had to detour. The reason, I saw, was that a man had jumped from the overpass, his body still laying in the middle of a lane with a blue tarp over him, his hand hanging out the end of it.

And just a few months ago I was about 45 minutes late to work, thanks to traffic on the freeway (different freeway). When I passed the accident scene there was a small moving truck that had hit a car and smashed up against the center divider. The driver of the truck was smashed up against the windshield, face bloodied, with his lifeless arm hanging out of the window. Gruesome, really.

Buslady7803 · #11 02-03-2010, 09:27 AM

I'm on the road a lot but I think I've only seen 2...one was a tarped motorcycle accident, this guy supposedly went flying when a car turned left in front of him. Poor guy. I had to tell my students to turn away, don't look. Tarped or not, it can be disturbing.

The other was on the way to the yard, on the 91, a motorcyclist was thrown from his bike but nobody could find him...until the helicopter spotted his body on TOP of the semi truck who whacked him. They had him on the ground & tarped by the time we drove by it, scary thing I think I had seen him many times before. All I saw was his boots sticking out.

Didn't see it live tho, just popped into me head, this one -
Yesterday though, 710 off ramp, Bike dude doing stupid stuff going around a truck ended up leaving his bike on the ramp, he went flying onto the street below.

Oh that reminded me, I was taking a group back and we saw a potential jumper, they had to shut down the freeway and divert us elsewhere but dang...my kids couldn't believe it, I think they saved the idiot from himself and he got help. But wow..seeing a jumper is really freaky.

playinpearls · #12 02-03-2010, 11:36 AM

within 2 weeks of moving to atlanta i saw my first 285 fatality. A honda civic tried to cut off an 18 wheeler. He turned sideways and the truck literally rolled over the car and spat it out while underneith the trailer. I was in traffic for 1.5 hours, and when i got to passing the scene, they were holding the white blanket up and loading him on the stretcher and into the white van...

definetly changed the mood of the day...

hbarcat · #13 02-03-2010, 04:58 PM

I used to be a certified EMT but decided not to make a job of it. Many of the EMT's I know chain smoke and drink too much. It's a hugely stressful job and I wasn't sure I could take that kind of emotional distress on a routine basis.

On a related note to the OP, my father once was driving through a construction zone and he witnessed a large earth mover back over a construction worker who wasn't paying attention. He said it was so disturbing because it looked just like a cartoon accident where the guy got flattened like a pancake as this huge wheel slowly rolled over him.

Stingray89 · #14 02-03-2010, 05:45 PM

It takes awhile to get rid of those images. I used to volunteer in the fire department and we got dispatched to a call. When we got there it was a really bad car crash. There was a deceased 3 year old in one of the cars. I left because of that call. It's a stressful job and I respect anyone that does, it just wasn't for me.

Steve · #15 02-03-2010, 05:48 PM

I can sympathize with the OP. Seeing death can be...disturbing...to say the least.

Having said that, seeing death is one heck of a lot better than smelling it.

Smelling death from a body in pieces? That right there will stick with you for a lifetime.

You can focus on the disturbance of death or you can use it as a catalyst to help you appreciate life. Choose the latter John.

MakiSupaStar · #16 02-03-2010, 05:54 PM

I've seen my share. Drownings, heart attacks, gunshot wounds, suicides, and once I went and checked out one of my doctor buddy's gross anatomy class. Some of the more gruesome ones stick in my head, but most of the others kind of come with the territory. It doesn't really bother me too much.

tplyons · #17 02-03-2010, 05:55 PM

I've seen a few on route 80 on my way to work. For some strange reason, I find the NJ State troopers cover them but leave the feet hanging out... maybe as a reminder to us other motorists?

Yes, it's disturbing, but a reminder that we are quite fragile.

**john turner** · #18 02-03-2010, 07:30 PM

thanks for the thoughts fellas.

and yeah, this certainly wasn't the first dead body i've seen. it was just very unexpected (of course), and since it's a road that i've travelled for 15 years, it seemed very "close to home".

MakiSupaStar · #19 02-03-2010, 09:43 PM

Yeah, it's funny which one hits us. It's just one of those things. The last one that hit me was a few years ago when I pulled that dead kid off the bottom of the ocean. It wasn't so much lifting the body off the bottom, or working him, but it was the sound of his wailing mother when she was delivered the news that will always stick with me. There is nothing worse than that sound. It sent me home with tears in my eyes and made me hold my wife and boy all night.

For me it's not so much the bodies, but all the other senses that go along with it. Especially the bodies that wash up a few weeks later. The gunshot suicides all have particular smell to them too. Something about the smell of gunpowder and this weird metallic cooked blood smell. Sights by themselves aren't so bad. Although there was this one particularly gross one, but I'll spare you guys the details.

Evil Undead · #20 02-04-2010, 05:42 AM

I know what you mean. I worked as a nurse for a couple of years and saw probably 20+ dead people. I always made them look nice for when the family came to pay their respects...