A young man has quite the story to tell after his wheelchair got lodged in the grille of a semi truck, which pushed the chair and the man inside for five miles down a road.
Muscular dystrophy forced Ben Carpenter, 22, of Alamo into a wheelchair eight years ago. He was on one of his twice-weekly outings, this time in Paw Paw around 4 p.m. Wednesday.
As he crossed Red Arrow Highway in front of a semi truck, he didn’t make the traffic light. The truck driver apparently didn’t see Carpenter and a collision occurred, causing the wheelchair’s handles to become lodged in the truck’s grille.
Carpenter remembers the sound. “Kind of like train cars coming together, something like that,” he told 24 Hour News 8.
Unable to hear Carpenter’s cries for help over the hum of the diesel engine, the truck driver continued down Red Arrow Highway at speeds of approximately 50 mph.
“It was fast, I know that. Faster than this chair was made to go,” Carpenter said.
“I was thinking, the cars keep going by and nobody bothered to stop.”
Read it all and if you have time listen to the 911 calls.
I saw this young man on Fox a couple of days ago.. He seemed cool about it, but did complain he lost his hat. And the wheels etc on the wheel-chair had to be replaced.
Great story…
Gloria
I use a wheelchair myself, and while nothing like this has ever happened to me, I can pretty well guess his terror! Those wheels are definitely not made for speeds over 5 mph!