The ambulance was rolling out of a gravel driveway. At the end of it, a blonde woman with mascara streaming down her cheeks was standing in a semi-hunched position. She was sobbing into a cell phone.
Even the State Patrol Troopers who were the first to greet us at the scene wore those extra sad expressions reporters know means only a handful of things. Most commonly that look means a young child is involved in a tragedy.
I already knew the story was about a kid. Just twenty minutes earlier the scanner crackled, "Six-year-old hit by truck...head injuries."
Just as the ambulance was leaving a friend of the family confirmed the scanner report and then added some information.
"It was a tragic accident; I believe the father backed over his son," said Randy Nilber. "The family's very shaken up and they're all on the way to the hospital right now."
At that moment the boy was already in the air speeding towards a Tacoma hospital. A medical helicopter transported him from the Rochester neighborhood; he had cuts on his head and lacerated liver.
The afternoon went from normal to nightmarish in a moment.
The man behind the wheel climbed into his big heavy-duty pick-up with an industrial work trailer attached. He spotted his two boys (ages 8 and 6) playing a safe distance away, he said to police.
Then the man says he put the rig into gear.
A moment went by.
Next, shock.
"As the father starts pulling out...the 8 year old comes running out...pounding on the truck and alerts the father he had just run over his son," Thurston County Sheriff Lieutenant Chris Mealey said.
Somehow the boy bolted from a "safe area" to a spot under the back wheels of the fully loaded work trailer.
Sadly, these accidents happen all the time.
Monday, a Covington toddler was run over by her aunt as the woman was pulling out of a driveway. The girl later died.
The journalism organization called the Poynter Institute recently published an online article about the issue of children too frequently dying because of cars backing over them. The story reports "6 kids die in 8 days" during the month of March. (www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=2&aid=120071).
Six kids in eight days...that's a lot of grieving parents.
Of course in this era of technology we want quick, easy answers to all problems. To the rescue in this case are scanners, warning systems and television monitors.
The Poynter story tells parents how they can get devices that cost anywhere from $300 to $1,000 to show them what's behind their cars as they back-up.
The electronic gizmos can probably help and could certainly give parents—or anyone-- peace of mind.
However, the gadgetry wouldn't have helped in Rochester. The boy's dad was pulling forward not backing out. The always-on-the-move compulsion of a six-year-old somehow caused the boy to get caught under the wheels of moving car.
So what is a parent to do?
Try my mother's technique: talk. Perhaps more accurately: scare.
Long before cameras and computer beeps and laser sensor were my mom's lectures.
Some of my earliest memories include mom telling me of how terrible, agonizing, maming and tortuous the death would be from any given danger. She made it a point: see a danger and just drill it into the kid ---stay away or else!
It worked. With my mother's ominous admonitions rattling around my head, I managed to avoid serious calamity as a child.
Nothing's fail safe. Accidents happen. Bad things happen to good people.
Even so, I bet just about every parent who knows the tragedy of running over their own flesh-and-blood wishes he or she would have spent a few more minutes warning their kids about how terribly dangerous those cars can be at any speed.
My heart breaks for these parents. The thought of losing a small child in this manner is more then I think that I could bear.
This type of tragedy has always been a particular nightmarish fear of mine. Yes, I am one of those parents that see danger for my children everywhere, and perhaps I have made them more fearful of possible danger then most children. Certainly friends and family have often enough said, in a negative tone, that I am too protective and hyper-vigilant, my children in particular have accused me of this. In my defense, I have always known that this type of thing happens much too often and if it should happen that I would never be able to forgive myself for not walking outside to watch as guests and family left my driveway. Maybe worse is the fear that I would never be able to forgive the family member/friend that I loved for not keeping those children in sight the entire time they were leaving the driveway. This is truly a double tragedy.
I agree with this writer that parents can not depend on, or trust gadgets to keep our children safe in the driveway. We must take the time to teach our children of the dangers that are waiting and as parents we must be vigilant. We must make sure that if our children are outside that we are in the driveway supervising the departure. Even then there are no guarantees, I know that no matter what I teach my kids or how vigilant that I am accidents and bad things could still happen, but if they do I hope that I will have the comfort of knowing that I did all that I could do to protect them and teach them of danger.
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