For crash victims’ families, the moment of truth about the worst

Part of a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper’s job is notifying next of kin when a person dies in a car crash. One trooper remembers a mother collapse in a doorway. Another caught a mother crumpling to the floor.

Why share troopers’ accounts of notifying families the worst has happened? This four-part series as part of the Put the Brakes on Fatalities Day safety blog is to emphasize the importance of traffic safety. Troopers see the consequences. They experience the painful fallout.

The is the first story in the four-part series involving KHP death notifications.

Please CLICK HERE to watch Trooper Gardner's video and read the story below.

 

A tragic Easter morning

Technical Trooper Ben Gardner

Technical Trooper Ben Gardner was sleeping when the call from dispatch woke him around 3:30 a.m. Easter morning.

Two pickups had collided on U.S. 56. An investigation would show that a larger pickup crossed the center line and struck a smaller pickup, killing the smaller vehicle’s driver – on his way from his late-night job to his wife and children.

Gardner could see marks showing where the fatally injured driver tried to steer away from the oncoming truck.

By sunrise, the trooper stood at the front of door of a woman who didn’t yet know she lost her husband. Small children gathered around the woman. They all looked confused. They expected to see their husband, their father, not a trooper in uniform.

After confirming that she was the victim’s wife, he told her what he had to in clear and concise words.

 “I say what I was always say: ‘It is my sad responsibility to tell you that your husband has been killed in a crash today. He is dead.’ And then I pause.”

In Gardner’s mind, that situation – “the most difficult moment in their life” – requires him “to be the best shepherd.”

“At that point, it’s about being a human being.” And as he continued to recount his sad obligation on that front porch, Gardner began to choke up. He paused. “I’m the person who will cry with the person,” he said.

What he remembers, after telling her, was her silence and her small children wandering away.

Sometimes in those situations, he said, “My words have struck them so hard that they fall to the ground.”

Others, like the woman, react with silence. Others, with anger.

That morning, the woman stood silent for a long time, Gardner remembers.

The man whose truck struck and killed her husband had been driving intoxicated and would spend almost 5 years in prison for it.

Years have passed since Gardner stood on that porch.

“But,” he said, “it’s still something I still think of.”