a night i'll never forget
09/20/03 ~ 7:08 p.m.
where to begin? i want to document this the best i can, not only to share the story with all of you, but also to keep it all together for me.
so last night, my new friend amber called me and invited us to go to the beach with her and a bunch of her husband's friends. cool, cool! i was excited.
so we drove out there, and, as these things go, we ended up leaving 3 hours later. because we needed to get cardboard and alcohol and palets and munchies and blah blah blah. so whatever.
we got to the beach after 9 pm, so it was all dark. we went to a certain part of the beach where we had to hike down a cliff to get there. it was kinda scary, but cool at the same time.
so there was drinking, a fire, snacks, conversation...fun was had. i really like amber and her husband (beto). but i'm going to skip forward to the important parts.
so we planned to leave at 1 am at the latest, but people were screwing around, so we finally got out at about 1:20. amber was driving, cuz beto had had some to drink. she was a little bit of a wild driver, so david and i were bracing ourselves when the cars in front of us come to an almost stop abrptly. i shouted to her to stop, and she did.
we see a car on the side of the road. upside down, leaning against the cliff. in all, we had 3 cars caravaning, so there were a lot of people getting out to investigate. beto and i stayed in the car. we could see a person lying in the road. there were calls to 911 immediately, obviously.
soon i heard amber yelling "flashlight! flashlight! we need to find the girl!" and beto and i flew out of the car, him holding the flashlight. they went to investigate the upturned car, but found the girl in the ditch next to the car.
the girl was in a sort of fetal position, legs above head, going up the cliff. she was unconcious, very pale, and struggling to breathe. she had vomit all in her mouth and fluid dripping from her nose.
the guy on the ground, who was bleeding from the head and claimed he couldn't feel his legs, kept moaning that her name was willow. so the guys that were helping (beto, david, adam, and phil) were calling her name, trying to get her to keep breathing, while a couple people were trying to get advice from 911 dispatchers. we knew not to move her in case of a spinal injury, but she wasn't doing very well.
the ambulences weren't there still when david yelled "she's not breathing!" she still had a pulse, but something drastic had to be done. they tried to pull her legs down and clear her airway, but we couldn't get anything going. she wasn't in a position for rescue breathing, not that any of us are certified for that.
the first fireman got there, but he was really just talking in his walkie talkie. he didn't do anything for willow. we told him she hadn't been breathing for about 2 minutes. then other firemen came on scene and finally went over to her. by then it had been about 7 minutes, and when they went down to move her, they pronounced her dead.
it doesn't seem real. i saw someone die. i've never even been to a funeral before.
her pale face is burned into my mind.
the only notable event after this was me coming to the realization that one of the guys walking around had been in the car. the guy bleeding on the ground is his brother. the dead girl was one of their girlfriends, we think. but this guy had reportedly told amber he was the driver. but then he told a bunch of other girls he was in the backseat. and the guy on the pavement was moaning "i wasn't driving, i wasn't driving..."
why the descrepency?
he was roaring drunk.
yeah.
fucking drunk drivers who walk away from accidents while their own brother may be paralyzed and friend is dead in a ditch. will they ever learn?
at about 2:30, we left the scene. it doesn't seem real. it feel like i watched COPS last night or something. i'm okay today, not traumatized or anything (as were some girls on the scene, as well as beto, who is convinced that "we could have done something to save her".)
what scares me most is that had we left 5 minutes earlier, any one of our cars could have been involved. without having any drunk drivers.
the whole thing was so gruesome and horrible... if i'd had a camera i would have taken pictures, but you know what? i don't need them. i can see it all again just by closing my eyes.
back 
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