"It opens and right here is Justin. I don't even see it but Jay is sobbing. It doesn't compute to me. Then I see him... You want it to be true, but you go, 'Am I hallucinating?' Justin didn't know what was going on."
October 11, 2014
"Police in a small Alaska town mistakenly told a couple their son had been killed in a car crash..."
Hours later, when Karen and Jay Priest have driven to the home of Justin's girlfriend to deliver the terrible news in person, at 5:30 in the morning, Justin himself opens the door and is surprised to see his parents. They are even more surprised to see him.
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12 comments:
And some other family got really bad news to that day.
I don't blame the Chief. It happens, and I've seen good friends find out their children were killed in car wrecks. Awful, I tell you.
I'm pretty sure that's a broken link.
Thanks for the heads-up about the link. Fixed.
Juneau is not a small Alaska town.
I recall someone receiving similar bad news and killing himself in grief before the error could be corrected.
That's irreversible.
"I recall someone receiving similar bad news and killing himself in grief before the error could be corrected."
Romeo Montague?
What a thing to live through. But as Paul says -- better to be the family receiving the false news than the true.
Juneau is not a small Alaska town.
Juneau is a city-county. It has 32,000 residents over 3,225 square miles!
By Alaska standards, Juneau is downright metropolitan. But, compared to the US as a whole, Juneau is a small town.
I had a somewhat similar case years ago when I was a surgery resident. We had this kid come in with a broken leg and he was comatose. We assumed a head injury (before CAT scans) and called the neurosurgeons. The neurosurgery resident, a jerk, came up and said, "He's brain dead. Call the transplant team." So I talked to his mother and explained things. She agreed to donate his kidneys and said, "I know you boys at the County (hospital) have done everything you could so, if you can take his kidneys and give them to someone else, I agree."
I called the transplant fellow and went upstairs to the OR where I spent the rest of the night. The transplant guys would set up an IV and run in lots of fluid to keep the kidneys going while they did tissue typing and notified potential recipients.
I came down at 7 AM to find the kid sitting up in bed and asking for breakfast ! Apparently, he had bled out from his compound (open) fracture and, when he got enough IV fluid, he woke up.
Now I had to call his mother and tell her he was alive after all. She didn't bat an eye. She said, "I knew you boys at the County would keep trying to save him even though I sad you could have his kidneys ! Praise the Lord !"
Fortunately, there was no other injured party.
Please tell me the neurosurgeon was no longer in the practice of medicine after that little stunt.
"I recall someone receiving similar bad news and killing himself in grief before the error could be corrected."
If only his son had remembered to raise the WHITE sails after killing the minotaur...
If it's not Bush's fault, it must be Sarah Palin's.
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