Sing along Barney

Have you ever been at an accident scene? A fatal crash that is. Was the music playing ? Was the horn hooting or was the smoke just coming from the engine silently? 

Were there screams of survivors seeking help or were they in the wreck silent and lifeless ?

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It has been my experience that almost all of the time, when a collision has resulted in a fatality, the radio was off - I think this was secondary to the battery probably being smashed to bits or mechanically disconnected. Now it is, however fairly common for the horn to be blowing non-stop and I never really understood why the horn was going, but the radio wasn’t — perhaps radios just aren't made like they were before.

In the few instances that the radio was on, I will tell you it was beyond eerie.

There was one call where a drunk driver was racing a friend on a back country road, and hit a family of 4 head on. I was the first on the scene. I was able to crawl into the wreckage. The mother was driving, the son 11 was in the front passenger seat, The older sister 8 was in the rear psgr seat, and the little sister around 4 was in the rear driver side seat. The mother was pinning the little girl behind her. Because of the rural nature of our service area, it took 35 min for mutual aid to arrive. The mother was in agonal respirations, the end of life breathing

I knew the mom was going to die, but I was a rookie, and I thought I could save her. I thought that by some superpower in me I might beat the odds. The little girl who she was laying on top of had a front row seat to watching her mom die in the slowest most terrible way you can think of. The two other children had serious, but non-critical injuries, the little girl was fading in front of me as well. I wasn't aware of the music until the mom died. The little girl was screaming “mommy wake up” and then went on to hit me repeatedly because I promised I would take care of her mommy… I never promised another patient ANYTHING after that call.

I remember hearing the distinct sound of a TV character singing — it was a Barney sing-along… Barney was asking the little girl to sing with him if memory serves it was colors or the like. When I looked down, the little girl, covered by her mom’s remains, was already unconscious.

That CD played for another 25 min or so until fire crews arrived and clipped the battery cables. To this day I hate Barney, I refuse to watch him with my daughter, and I physically get ill when I hear it.

The good news is that the little girl made it, and has no memory of what happened. I am still scarred to this day because of the things I saw in that scene that night.

So, what is it like to respond to a car crash and hear music playing if you ask me ? It is a nauseating reminder of how life can and will go on, even in the most horrifically tragic of circumstances.

As told by Bryce A. Reed