Call 911. I Found A Body

This post was first published on my personal website at www.darrenalff.com in mid 2008.

Just the other day I went out on a bike ride and was cycling along a path that ran parallel to the freeway. I was climbing a small hill when I looked to my left and saw a pair of legs sticking out from underneath a freeway overpass.

I rode past the legs and then realized that the legs were attached to somebody! So I slammed on the brakes and quickly whipped my bike around. I walked back to the body, thinking that the person would get up and acknowledge my presence, but the legs didn’t move and I became more frightened.

What was so strange about this whole situation was that the person was laying in a real odd place… and in a very peculiar position. He was located on the freeway side of a barbed wire fence, so my first thought was, “How the heck did he get over there?” Then I noticed that he was laying half way in the sun and half way in the shade and his arm was twisted in such a manner that there was no way he could be comfortable like that. Beside his body lay an empty beer bottle.

As I got closer to him I called out, “Are you okay?”

He didn’t move.

I couldn’t tell if he was breathing… and it was then that I thought he might be dead!

I instantly grabbed my cell phone out of my handlebar bag and called 911.

“What is your emergency?” the female operator asked me.

“Well, I’m not sure if it’s an emergency, but I’m on my bicycle and I just found a body laying underneath the freeway overpass.”

I went on to describe where the body was and she told me to wait there until the police arrived.

No more than three minutes later did a fire truck, ambulance, and two police cars arrive at the scene. I walked one of the firemen over to the body and he jumped the barbed wire, calling to the man the entire time.

The body just laid there until finally it moved!

A Mexican looking man slowly lifted his head and looked around as two more officers jumped the barbed wire fence and began asking him questions.

“Have you been drinking? How many did you have? Have you been doing anything else?”

In the end, the man was okay, but plastered out of his mind. I had to fill out a police report and describe what had happened. The man was arrested and taken to jail for public intoxication and the officers thanked me for making the 911 call.

I was shaken during the incident and sad that there are people out there who do this to themselves.

I continued my bike ride and tried to shake off the incident, trying to be thankful for the fact that the man was still alive.