We stood in the shade, but we couldn't escape the humidity. Sweat dripped onto my note pad. I brushed it away with my finger leaving a smear. It was Sunday evening. Reserve Deputy Billy Bowers and I were talking to the victim of a theft off of Colquitt Road when we got the call: “Signal 53, John’s Gin Road at Keatchie Marshall Road. Occupants of a four door Chevrolet are trapped inside.” As we ran to the car it thundered.
John’s Gin Road at Keatchie Marshall Road is the last intersection in the southwest corner of Caddo Parish before you get to Desoto Parish and the Texas state line. It is quiet on a busy day. The odds of two vehicles even meeting at the intersection were one in a thousand.
We were 12 miles away as the crow flies but along country roads it was closer to twenty miles. Billy and I were the closest unit. I flipped on my lights and siren and drove like I could get there in five minutes. That’s when the rain hit. It came in torrents through glaring sunlight. Sunset was near, and the water’s reflection on the pavement was blinding.
I snuck up on half a dozen Sunday drivers and flipped my siren from Yelp to Hi-Lo to get them to pull to the right, but when we got to John’s Gin Road, traffic was light to none, and I made good time, but I forgot about the sharp curve ahead. It was too late to hit the brakes in the pouring rain, so I held my foot on the brake pedal and took the curve at a speed too fast even on a dry day. I hoped to slide into the field to our right without rolling over, but somehow the tires held the wet pavement.
“Thank you Lord.”
Billy finished my prayer, “Amen.”
Fire District 4 was already on scene when we arrived and had the intersection shut down. A four door sedan was on the far side of John’s Gin on the shoulder. The driver’s side was caved in from an impact heard from miles away. A large van was a hundred yards west on the side of Keatchie Marshall Road with heavy front end damage, enough to push the motor into the driver’s compartment. Billy and I went to the van and spoke to the driver who was on his feet and unscathed. He had been driving a van load of migrant workers who disappeared before we arrived. The driver told us the car shot out in front of him after running the stop sign at the intersection, and there was no way he could stop. The van T-boned the car at 55 mph.
The firemen had draped the car with a tarp which was dripping from the earlier rain. I lifted the tarp and opened the passenger door to find two men lying haphazardly in seats broken loose from their mounts and and twisted backward. The air was heavy with blood and alcohol. I reached over the dead body of a man still warm from the life which departed from him minutes earlier and opened the glove compartment. I found the car registration and insurance behind two bottles of Lynchburg Lemonade.
The paramedics were fifty feet in front of us, desperately working on a thirteen year old girl who had been thrown from the car during the crash. We set up an LZ in the middle of the road, and Billy, who was a helicopter paramedic and Shreveport Fireman, directed the landing of the helicopter. By now the sun had dropped below the horizon, and we were using flashlights. The raincoat that kept me dry when we arrived had become a sauna, and I was wetter than I would have been if I hadn’t worn it at all. I took it off and hung it on my mirror to dry.
The little girl was stable when the helicopter left for the hospital. I took measurements of the intersection and vehicles, found the point of impact which was a deep long gouge in the pavement, and collected the paperwork I needed. The Coroner arrived, and the firemen cut the car open to extricate two men who weren’t going home that night. We loaded two body bags in the Coroner’s van. Two wreckers arrived but were delayed sweeping up glass, metal, plastic, bottles, and car parts. The firemen sprayed the intersection with firehoses, washing away oil and transmission and brake fluid. When the wreckers departed, the only evidence that there had been a tragic crash at the intersection was a of a gouge in the pavement.
There was no field sobriety or Breathalyzer tests to do. Justice was served in a different way that night, but it left victims in its wake, and those who remained had to learn to live with a tragedy that would never go away.
Billy and I left the crash scene for the hospital to check on the little girl. We were on I-20 beside Independence Stadium when Dispatch called and told us the little girl didn’t make it. I looked to my right and saw a billboard of a sweating bottle of Lynchburg Lemonade.
The law enforcement officers who do our dirty work and clean up our messes live with constant reminders of how frail life truly is. For guys like me, those reminders are accompanied with the realization that God does not leave his creatures without hope because Christ gave himself on the cross to provide for all who repent and trust in him alone. “For God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteous of God through him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21
Rest In Peace Billy Bowers, 2024
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