Late last year a man was running along a sidewalk in Waukesha County listening to music, when a car careened off the road and into him. The 54-year-old runner was knocked over the top of the vehicle. Witnesses to the car accident pulled off the road and contacted emergency response crews, describing the man’s unconscious, bleeding condition and what they believed would be a fatal car accident.
The injured runner was taken to Froedtert Hospital where he underwent surgery for a brain injury. Doctors removed part of the man’s skull to alleviate the pressure of swelling. The accident victim also suffered a lacerated liver and more than a dozen broken bones.
The accident witnesses reported that they had been following the car in front of them on purpose. A man and his wife noticed the vehicle swerving in the road for several miles and decided to track it. When the car turned onto Highway 16 and then Capitol Drive, the witnesses say the driver suddenly oversteered to miss an oncoming car and ran over a curb striking the unsuspecting runner.
The driver in the accident has been arrested and imprisoned. He goes on trial in June for charges of inflicting great bodily harm while under the influence of cocaine and an anti-depressant. Shortly before the accident, the Wisconsin driver had recently been released from prison where he was serving time on drug trafficking charges.
The injured man, now undergoing lengthy physical therapy, has become fast friends with the accident witnesses. He says they saved his life. The couple who saw the tragic accident recently held a fundraiser, earning $8,000, which they donated to the hospital’s brain injury rehabilitation program.
Source: Journal Sentinel Online, “These friends met by accident, and it was lucky they did,” Jim Sting, 16 April 2011
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