Two days after somebody dinged our van on Broadway, there was a fatal accident in the same spot. A drunk driver came barreling north on Broadway and crossed into oncoming traffic just as it past our building. He slammed into a motorcyclist who then landed on the roof of the livery cab driving behind him. All we heard were two horrible crashes. We watched from the fire escape for a long time as over 20 emergency vehicles arrived. We never saw a motorcycle, but we did see a stretcher covered in a yellow blanket and not going anywhere. The motorcyclist was declared dead on the scene. He was an off-duty police officer who lived a few streets north of our Chapel. His wife is expecting their first child this month. We laid in bed watching the lights flash on our ceiling and counting our blessings for some time before we gratefully drifted off to sleep knowing we would all wake up together Monday morning.
Monday I talked with the children about choice and consequences. We believe in agency and that means other people get to make choices that can hurt us. At the same time, our Savior has already atoned for the sins of the drunken driver and hopefully the both families will find peace and comfort in his love. Hopefully, we can make choices that will bring something unexpected, but good into other people's lives.
I emailed this photo of the accident to the reporters from El Diario and they ran it on the front page of their July 2, 2007 issue. There was also a paragraph about me stating my age and that I started taking pictures when the crash woke me up. Not exactly true as My Hero took the pictures well after the police arrived. They also took some pictures of me, but thankfully, they were not printed in the paper.
