DWB from my POV

We saw Davey and his family off to Texas, carried a box of miscellaneous items back from their house for sale, walked past some neighborhood kids, ages 10 to 14, shooting hoops in a driveway. They yelled at the 2 semi-trucks laboring along, “Bye-bye, Davey, bye-bye.”

“They’re already gone,” my wife said, nodding in the direction of a Ford Expedition farther up the road, disappearing from our subdivision.

The kids went back to their game and we continued our walk home. The plan was to get our vehicle and go grab a quick bite to eat. It couldn’t have been more than 5 minutes when we approached the same spot where the kids were playing basketball, however, the scene was much different. My wife, always the driver, asked whether we should stop to see what was going on. I told her, “No, keep going.”

This is what I saw in the side mirror: Mrs. Witkowski holding a kid tightly to her bosom, trying to restrict his movement as he sat on the side of the pavement; Mr. Witkowski on his cell phone; Another adult herding the kids into the house. I looked out the back window to get a better view and saw a black man standing near his Pacifica, both arms gesticulating wildly above his head. “Turn back,” I said, “this doesn’t look good. People drive too damned fast down this street.”

My wife looped around the block and we got out. The unidentified adult approached the teenage driver (I had been wrong in thinking he was an adult) and tried to calm him. I glanced at his Pacifica, which seemed new except for the dent in the front right fender. I approached Mrs. Witkowski, who was doing a great job of keeping the kid calm. “Let me know if you get tired,” I said. I glanced at the kid’s left leg, mangled, with tire marks on it. Within minutes, three police cars, two firetrucks, and an ambulance, all of them with sirens blaring, cordoned off the street and went to work. Not that it should matter, but keep in mind: everyone at the scene was white, except for the driver.

This is what happened: The 16 year old driver had just received his license and was driving extremely slow through the subdivision, babying his new ride that I had learned later had a pre-existing dent. The kid ran to retrieve the basketball, saw that the car was crawling along, so he grabbed the ball and turned, his left leg slipping out from under him and right into the path of the Pacifica’s rear tire. From what I heard, the driver kept saying, “My momma’s gonna kill me. I’m going to prison. Oh man, I crushed his leg.” No one wanted the kid to hear any of this.

EMS rushed the kid to the nearest hospital with Mrs. Witkowski by his side. All I kept thinking of was my last words to Davey, “Remember what I told you…” but he finished my sentence for me, “they fry people in Texas so behave, I know, but I’m not going to prison,” he assured me with confidence. Now, if only the 16 year old driver could believe the same thing; afterall, it wasn’t his fault, it was an accident, a horrible, horrible accident.