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What do you do when you find a body on the roadside?Posted by Wayne on 15th July 2009

My 8 and 5 year old boys were staying with Nana for a night. Kate (my “significant other”), our youngest, and myself decided we would stay and have dinner with Nana and the two older boys, before heading back to our home in Hunua, around 8pm.

Hunua is a very small country town, approximately 20 km’s southeast of Papakura. There is a Mini Supermarket (an overgrown dairy which also sells booze, hence the term “mini supermarket” in the business name, because dairies cannot get a license to sell alcohol in NZ), a Mobil gas station (which never has any gas in its pumps because it is quite unprofitable. The owners have allowed the Mini Supermarket to take away all the ice-cream, bread, and butter sales that used to support their viability), a Primary school, a Playcentre, a couple of churches (which have been converted into residential homes), some residential homes, a Fire Station, a tennis and a bowling club. You have to travel through a gorge and then some beautiful countryside to get there. Our home is approximately 2km’s beyond the township itself.

The entire length of road used to get to Hunua is narrow, hilly, and very windy. During the day it is often populated with massive trucks (which service the quarry and/or use the road as an alternate route to State Highway 2), residents vehicles, farm vehicles (such as large tractors with big farm implements in tow), and cyclists (nutty as a tree overly laden with nuts. Cycling is a great sport. Having done a fair bit of cycling myself I can see the appeal Hunua Road has for these nutters, but given the nature of the traffic on this road as well as the design of the road itself, common sense would suggest there are safer places to cycle than Hunua Road). However, at this time of night one would only expect to see resident’s cars on the road, as they go about their business. And our business was to get home.

 

Approximately 200 metres after exiting Hunua township Kate saw what appeared to be a large clump of green rubbish bags on the edge of the road to the left. With my eyes on the centre of the road, these did not even enter my peripheral vision. As we drove past Kate saw what she thought was a human hand protruding from the pile. “Turn around”, she told me. “I think I saw a body on the side of the road. It looked like a pile of rubbish bags at first because I could see no head, but then I saw a hand sticking out.” This was a country road. I had to go some way to come across a driveway. When we were almost at the driveway there was another car, driving very slowly uphill, going in the opposite direction. Luckily the driveway I was looking for was big enough to allow me to perform the required manoeuvre. I had to drive just beyond the spot where Kate said she had seen the “object” so I could make use of a side road to perform a second U-turn.

As we passed the spot where Kate had first seen the “object” (on the way to the side road) another car, the one we had seen coming up the hill before, had stopped by the rubbish bags. The driver, wearing a fleecy jacket, shorts, and gumboots was standing outside his car looking at the crumpled heap on the roadside. I think he was trying to decide what to do next. This driver had done exactly what we had done. He had driven past the object, turned around in the same driveway we did, driven back up the hill towards Hunua, and performed a second U-turn in the same side road we were about to. He had stopped his car before he reached the object again, and turned on his hazard lights to warn any vehicle approaching from the west of the potential hazard. I completed my second U-turn, then drove my car a wee way beyond the object, stopped, and turned on my hazard lights to the east of the scene, to warn cars coming from the other direction that something could be up.

 

Although I had never met him before, the driver of the other car was a farmer who lived just beyond our house. His ‘business’ this evening was to drop off his daughter to a friend’s house for an over-nighter. I found this out as I quickly introduced myself, before I approached the object. By now I could see it was human, and I heard the other driver comment that he thought the person was breathing. The reason Kate could not see the head before is because the figure was dressed in a hooded sweatshirt that had been pulled up over the top of the head. The hood blocked any view of the face.

 

The body was in a self-imposed recovery position. I lifted the hood slightly, not sure what I would find underneath. It was the seemingly normal face of a lady, perhaps in her early to mid 50’s. Indeed, she certainly was breathing. And she was moaning. Her body started rocking. She looked in pain. She grasped her mid section and moaned louder. What had happened here? A hit and run? A drunken fall? A hypoglycaemic collapse?

It started to rain. Gently at first, then the drops grew bigger, fatter, and greater in number. Kate gave me her cell and I called “111”. I asked for “Ambulance”. The guy who answered got me to describe my location, situation, and my assessment of the woman’s condition. When he asked me for my cell number I gave him a really old one, from a long time ago. Obviously he had Kate’s number up on his computer screen, because he confirmed it for me. I felt silly, but I had to agree he had quoted me the right number, Kate’s cell number. He advised the Ambulance would be 20 minutes away. He asked me if I could stay with the lady and render assistance. I have done several First Aid courses in my working life, and I thought I was ready and able to do whatever I needed to do.

 

The guy on the phone asked me to stay with the lady, and to call immediately if my assessment of her condition changed. The phone call was over. And we were left there, alone, with a person who was, for whatever reason, undoubtedly in trouble. The adrenalin was pumping, and the emotions were charged. My immediate assumption was a hit and run. I felt some anger rise inside me when I considered the possibility that someone had done this to a person and then driven off. Then the other driver pointed out there was no blood, no obvious wounds. Then I decided it did not really matter how she had gotten there, lying on the side of the road. She was breathing, we had to make sure she kept breathing. Kate had raced to the car and fetched a blanket.

Warmth. Good idea. I could do little more than try to talk to the lady to get her story, and comfort her as best I could with reassurances that we would stay with her and that help was on the way. Luckily, although the three of us were alone, we could help each other. So I am telling you folks, right here and now - if you have not completed a First Aid course, do one – now! You seriously do not know when you will have to use what you learn. In this case, the first to arrive (after us) were the local volunteer Fire people. Some of these guys are well trained First Aider’s. It felt better knowing we had help now. I did what I could to help the Fire people, doing whatever they asked me to do. They were asking her for a name, and trying to find out what had happened. The lady was incoherent, so we never got far.

 

One Fire officer steadied the head and supported the neck whilst another tried to improve the recovery position the lady had placed herself in when she fell, and I was asked to keep her legs still. Although not so young these days, I can still do 100 chin ups over a day, or 300 press ups. I enjoy yoga for flexibility. But I could not keep this woman’s legs still to begin with. It is just amazing what the body can do when it thinks it has to. The strength this woman had was incredible.

Luckily my body was in emergency mode too, so once I had a handle on things I did manage to do better keeping her legs still. By now the lady was shaking and convulsing. What seemed like an age later, but what was probably only 15 or 20 minutes, the Ambulance arrived. We still could not leave as it seemed the work we started had to continue whilst the Ambulance officers did what they had to do, which included helping her to breathe better with a mask.

 

Police arrived and started to survey the scene. The Ambulance officer’s continued to work with the lady, and we came free enough so that we could offer our statement to Police. We were allowed to sit in the dry Police car while we did this. I noticed how the farmer neighbour’s gumboots must have been filling up with water when we were outside. He cannot have been very warm with the gumboots and the shorts. I cannot remember ever seeing a civilian so happy to see the inside of a Police car!

He also told me the friend he had dropped his daughter off to visit was living with her solo mother, that he had been a long time returning to his wife at home, and that he was surprised his wife had not called him on his cell to find out where he was and what he was doing. I offered to provide an alibi for his wife if he needed one. By the time the Police had finished with us, the Ambulance officers had the lady in the Ambulance and were still working with her. There was nothing more for us to do, so we left.

 

Mercifully Kael, our baby, had been asleep in our car since just after we left Nana’s house. I went inside to remove the very wet outer garments I had on and immediately came back out to take Kael from the back seat of the car to his room. I put Kael to bed. It was cold. I turned the heater on in his room and ensured he was well covered with warm bedding. He settled straight away. A look at the clock suggested we had been working in the rain for the past hour and a half. I stoked the fire I had lit before we left for dinner at Nana’s 4 & ½ hours ago. I was very grateful for the fire now.

We showered then sat by the roaring fire, going over things, then watching some comedy, trying to relax. We don’t know what happened to the lady. Hopefully she has come right. But we are satisfied our duty was performed properly. We had done everything we could do, given the situation, and the limited level of medical training we have undertaken in the past. We had properly applied the “ABC” rules of First Aid, and that knowledge comforted us and helped us to calm down after the events of the evening. Do that training folks. You never know when you will be required to employ your knowledge of First Aid.

 

Regards,
Wayne (VP Sales and Marketing, StorMan USA)