My name is Carrie and I am a Decatur Hamilton Firefighter and have been for almost 8 years and in that time I have seen a lot of things that have really made me think how life is precious and enjoy it to the fullest. This is a very emotional thing for me because in this case I knew the person and the family and that is a chance that we take on every call living in a small town. About 4 years ago, a week before Thanksgiving, on a frosty fall morning I was getting the kids off to school and talking on the phone with my mom like I do everyday. Then in an instant my pager goes off and my mom said she loves me and be careful and the pager said it was a truck vs garbage truck. I was on my way direct to the scene because it was close to where I lived. Arriving on the scene I see this ford truck has crashed into the back of the garbage truck and the whole front of the ford is under the garbage truck.

I approached the vehicle at the same time a police officer did and we both realized who it was. I felt for a pulse and there was not a pulse at all and at that moment I realized he was gone and it was a helpless feeling and knowing this person since he was a little boy it was very hard for me. I knew that it was not going to be good since he lived at home and you could see it from the scene. As people started arriving and the EMS crew came up and the paramedic that was working that day realized who he was because he was the DJ at her wedding.

The whole scene was very emotional because the family arrived and I had to speak with the mother and never in my life did I feel a sense of emotion and pain as I did then. An as I was speaking with mother she informed me that she called her son that morning because he was late for work and they were angry at each other and then the next thing she know he is gone.

The Medical Examiner did her job and then we had to package him up in the body bag. The family was catholic and the priest who was the uncle of the victim came. I can remember when cutting him out it was very quiet and calm everyone was doing their job and was being tested. Bringing him out on the backboard, his arm was dragging and was hitting all of the sharp metal and glass. My reaction was he is going to get cut. I put it across his chest.

A few days later I was contacted by a family member to call the mother of the victim.It was the day of the funeral all I can say is it was a healing process that I needed too. We talked for 2 hours. I explained things and she explained things, we cried together and laughed, and in my mind I thought wow this mother just lost her son and she wanted to talk with me. One of the things I told was about when her sons arm came off the backboard and his hand was hitting the sharp metal and glass I said that I grabbed his arm and put across his chest and I said to her I wondered why I did and she said because you are a mom and that’s what we do. This was very hard call but I did get through it and there is not a day that goes by I don’t think about that family.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 6:25 pm and is filed under The Inside Scoop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.