News Search

ArticleS

Sheppard Airmen's response to off-base accident lends real-life lessons

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Mike Meares
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  On their way back to base from an evening out, three Sheppard Airmen witnessed a  single-car crash so horrific, they didn't know if anyone could've survived it.

Airman Basic Kristen McLaughlin, 363rd Training Squadron Airman in training, of Copperas Cove, Texas, leapt from the car she was a passenger in and sprinted toward a small pickup truck continuing to twist itself around the large concrete pillars holding the bridge above it up Nov. 17. As it came to a rest, she didn't have a clue what she would find inside, but she feared the worst.

"As we were sitting (at the redlight) near the underpass on Kemp, we heard a loud noise," McLaughlin said. "I looked to my left and see this Chevy S-10 come off the bridge. All I really saw was smoke, dust and sparks."

McLaughlin ripped off her seatbelt, jumped out of the car and ran toward the accident scene before the vehicle ever came to a rest. As she quickly approached, she took the scene in with disbelief.

"There is no way anyone could survive," she remembers thinking about the damage. "I thought I would be dealing with someone who had passed away due to his injuries."

The small pickup truck came to rest in a heap of scrap metal barely recognizable. The front end was torn apart and the headlights were ripped out of the vehicle. The bed was twisted and the rear axle was no longer attached to the frame, and the wheels were separated completely from the axels. McLaughlin described the front wheels as "tacos" because they were folded in half. Glass, oil and gasoline littered the entire roadway.

McLaughlin's first love is for the medical field as she is as she holds credentials as a certified nursing assistant. Responding to the accident came natural to her and she immediately took over the scene. Some bystanders, narrowly escaping the truck as it twisted into a heap, helped pull the drivers from wreckage.

"I was surprised to find a pulse on his neck, and thanking God he wasn't dead," she said. "Watching it happen as I ran toward it, I was praying this guy would survive the crash.

"I got to the truck about the time (one of the bystanders) started pulling the driver out," she said. They laid him on the ground as flat as possible and she immediately started first aid. She stabilized his head and neck, and helped him regain consciousness. "I could tell he had been drinking because I could smell the alcohol."

Airman 1st Class Timothy Walden, Brownsville, Texas, stepped in to calm down a couple of teenagers who were bystanders narrowly escaping injury, while emergency technicians made their way to the scene. Airman 1st Class Jacob Curran, Gilbert, Ariz., parked his car to block traffic, then alerted emergency responders to the scene.

In today's computer generated graphics era, a talented graphic artist can make fantasy come alive on the video screen. In the digital age, anyone can see these kinds of accidents at any time with simple internet searches. For the trio of Airmen, witnessing the incident first hand is more eye-opening then seeing it on a video screen.

"You don't get the full effect and trauma out of it as if you saw it in person," Walden said.

"I was in shock really. I don't know exactly how to take it," He said. "From what I saw, the guy could've died. The truck was in pieces."

McLaughlin treated the driver of the accident while kneeling down in the broken shards of glass, oil, water and gasoline mixture on the roadway. Needing to purchase a new pair of jeans, she returned to the area in town the next day and saw the scars on the concrete where the driver wrapped the truck around the concrete supports.

"I'm grateful that I was there to be able to help someone else, which is a reason I joined the Air Force," McLaughlin said. "But at the same time it made me kind of angry when I see people drinking, laughing and cutting up when I just pulled someone from an accident. It takes something like that to open someone's eyes."