I see dead people, do you?

I saw a guy on a motorcycle drive into the side of a semi. I didn't get out and take his pulse, but I'm pretty sure he died.

I also saw a dead body floating in the Calumet River, not far from the Torrence Ave Ford Assembly plant (Chicago).

July 25, 2011 I went to visit a sick friend at lunch. He was sound asleep and I did not disturb him. I went back after work and he had not moved. I could not wake him so I called an ambulance. He died within the hour.

Well, that's the way to go, but I'm still very sorry for your loss.

snipes wrote: You guys love your little Miatas so all I can say is be careful. Most things really will drive right over the top of you. I saw the trailer of an 18 wheeler drive over one and I have not considered buying one since.

My wife and I were going from St. Louis to Gateway to do corner worker stuff, and were passed on the bridge by two young pretty girls in a Geo Metro convertible. Seconds later a 18 wheel gravel truck changed lanes from right to left, trapping the car in front of the rear trailer wheels. When her windshield shattered the girl hit the brakes......and the rear wheels of the trailer steamrolled the Geo. What was left was about 10 inches high, and filled with red goo and hair.

When I was 12 I saw my best friends big brother, get his brains beat OUT by his classmate with a football sized rock. They had a fight and when he went down the other guy sat on his chest and picked up the nearby rock.

A year later I saw my cousin, after being accidentally/negligently shot point blank with a 20 gauge shotgun through the right shoulder. He lived, but they had already given him 12 pints of blood and the floor and walls were splattered.

When in High School I saw a guy hit another in the forehead with a camp-axe. It stuck and the guy who was hit gutted his attacker with a knife. Then walked twenty feet to his car , a Plymouth GTX, and I clearly remember, he had to tilt his head so that the axe handle would clear the steering wheel. And I watched in awe, as he drove off.

I am always amazed that people (men in particular) make it to middle age without having to defend themselves from attack. Where I grew up it was common. And I'm appalled at the people who say, "I saw this accident, but didn't stop to help. because I don't want to see that.". If you were laying at the side of the road, you would want someone to stop and help.

Viet Nam ... late 60's, early 70's... more than I really needed to see

In reply to 4eyes:

Good grief man! What kind of environment did you grow up in?

I've seen a few, generally people who were expected to die (illness etc) but the one that sticks out in my mind was the sportbike stunters who went zinging by in heavy Interstate traffic. After they passed, about 1/4 mile ahead there was a sudden commotion in traffic and it slowed to a near crawl. When we got there, one of the stunters had had a bad crash, he was laying on the pavement with 3 or 4 people trying to help him. His helmet was still on, the worst part was his feet were drumming on the pavement and his hands were jerking. The guy driving the RV I was riding in is an MD, he said 'that guy's dead, those are just reflex actions'. The people trying to help realized this as well and covered him with a blanket which moved as the body continued to twitch. If I close my eyes, I can still see that. We were all on our way home from racing dirt bikes, it was a long quiet trip back home.

my mom and grandma I was at bedside (in the house as they where on hospice)... 13 years apart within a day or 2 of each other...

but I can't recall ever seeing any other on scene type deaths...

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to 4eyes: Good grief man! What kind of environment did you grow up in?

no place I want to visit, that is for sure

mad_machine wrote:

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to 4eyes: Good grief man! What kind of environment did you grow up in?

no place I want to visit, that is for sure

Yeah, and I thought my ghetto was rough. The one story like that that I have (didn't see it, just the evidence) was pretty bad.
My school (and the rest of the Detroit system) didn't have any type of music program so the auditorium (beautiful place, the school was amazing when it was built) was the place that people skipped school, even though the VERY NEXT door in the hallway was the police station. Nope, not security, we had them but we had a fully-staffed,fully functioning police station in the school.
Anyway, there were a bunch of thugs skipping class and this one dude was on stage throwing gang signs. Some dude from a rival gang came up from behind him, and slit this throat from ear to ear as they say. Be bled out very quick from what I hear. The blood stained the stage and I bet is still there today.

I was a Combat Medic Platoon leader in a Stryker Infantry Brigade during the Surge...I've lost count. Luckily, most of them weren't our guys. When I was in college I worked in the O.R. of a major childrens' hospital -- those were the hardest ones to deal with.

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to 4eyes: Good grief man! What kind of environment did you grow up in?

Read , "The Outsiders", by S.E Hinton but don't watch that movie with all the pretty-boys in it. HERE Then we moved to one of the counties in OK that functions as a Native American reservation. What everyone did on Friday and Saturday nights was basically, get drunk and fight.

4eyes wrote: I am always amazed that people (men in particular) make it to middle age without having to defend themselves from attack.

I'm 55, and the last time I was in a fight of any sort was scuffling with my brother when I was 12. For the last 30 years I've lived in the inner city, just a few blocks from the 'hood', with zero issues.

In reply to stuart in mn: Whitey Bulger allegedly killed one of Tulsa's prominent businessmen, a half mile from my house. It seems he welched on a jai-alai bet. Tulsa was a rough place in the late '60s early '70s.

Been there when a couple aunts, my grandmother, and both my parents died. My grandmother and my parents were all in the hospital but the aunts died unexpectedly at family gatherings.

But the one I can't forget is when six of my highschool classmates were killed in a vehicle acident. After practice for the school play we all headed out to a local diner to get something to eat. When we went to leave one of the guys with 5 others in the car pulled out in front of a tractor trailer coming down the hill at about 50mph. Let'sjust say there wasn't any viewing at any of the funerals.

Probably shouldn't have typed this because I am visualizing it all over now and that was 50 years ago.

4eyes wrote:

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to 4eyes: Good grief man! What kind of environment did you grow up in?

Read , "The Outsiders", by S.E Hinton but don't watch that movie with all the pretty-boys in it. HERE Then we moved to one of the counties in OK that functions as a Native American reservation. What everyone did on Friday and Saturday nights was basically, get drunk and fight.

Wow. I thought my rural Southern upbringing was tough. We fought a lot, but it was rare to see somebody get killed. Hell, most of the time, just producing a weapon stopped a fight.

As far as the bigger topic, growing up on the beach was definitely not the ghetto, but from time to time we'd stumble across someone who'd fallen overboard offshore (or some drunk that had stumbled off his party barge in the Sound), or some poor old guy who'd had a heart attack in his skiff & then drifted into the marsh. I agree with the guys who've found elderly folks..you think weapon wounds are rough? Try decomposition. If I hadn't grown up eating crab & eel, I'd never touch another one.

I'm a Nurse in an ER, so I see more than a couple.

Worst was actually my first personal patient to die. They were joking around with me, trying to get me to help the patient finish their Golytely. "Have a drink with me!" Helped them to the bathroom, sat the patient up to help back to bed and they say "something's not right." Went literally blue in color from the nipple line up, and that was all she wrote, not that we didn't try to get them back.

Yes, but only one that always comes to mind. Was in a pretty serious boating accident 15years ago, There were three of us and two of us survived. Not much to tell, but I still (though it's thankfully rare now) have the dreams that wake me from a sound sleep in a cold sweat.

I have seen some pretty nastly accidents on track in the 8 odd years I have been working/attending track days but so far none of them have been fatal.

I used to take a short cut behind the post office, where a few bums used to sun themselves on the creek banks, or lie under the shrubbery in the shade. Remember thinking to myself, "hoo boy, that fellow looks bad" (most of them didn't really look that good to tell the truth, probably due to the number of empty Listerine bottles lying around). Later while listening to the news... heard that a man of "no fixed address" was found dead there that day.

I have a good friend who is dying – it's such an overwhelming thing that I'm honestly at a loss to describe how it feels.

im sorry to hear that lesley. my condolences.

I was involed in car accident 10 days ago, and the 90 year old man who hit me died. Still not sure how i feel about it.

I'm sorry - hugs.

I have seen a few but they were mostly just bodies that weren't alive... like someone after a heart attack. Not much blood and guts type.

I did work as a rescue diver for three days. Nothing can really explain the horrors of seeing someone who's been underwater for three months. Pulling up a corpse only to find that you lost both arms and one leg on the way up is kinda disturbing.

The closest I ever saw was a car covered in a sheet that had hit a stopped semi truck at 70+ mph. I think only one of the 4 or 5 people in the car survived.

geomiata wrote: I was involed in car accident 10 days ago, and the 90 year old man who hit me died. Still not sure how i feel about it.

I got through similar by realizing that only the person who did wrong paid the price. The innocent were not hurt.
Also, at 90 yrs old, the man got a good deal, a pretty full ride here on earth.