WHEN LIFE TAKES THE WHEEL
My car after the crash…may she rest in pieces
My near-death experience/comeback story
For my close friends and family, this story has been touched on and retold many times before. But for some of you, this will be your first time hearing about this. Over the past two years, I have been itching to share this story in hopes of connecting, educating, and resonating with others who have been through something such as this, while also hopefully giving myself a new sense of clarity. Due to legal reasons, I have not been able to share this story in its entirety in a public online space. But as of June 13th, 2025, our case has been completely settled and I am able to be fully and publicly transparent.
I wanted this story to be my return to posting blogs, since I have been busy over the summer with my internship and other side quests (which I will most definitely be writing about and sharing in the near future), and because this topic is such an important part of my life and has contributed to my character development over these last few years. It is, as some would say, my “comeback story.”
The story you are about to read includes topics that might be uncomfortable or hard to hear for some (TW: images and mentions of crashed cars, serious injuries, and trauma)
News coverage of the crash (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4jCS4syCLQ&ab_channel=FOX8WGHP)
The date August 12, 2023, may be a date of significance to a handful of people in this world. For me and my family, that date will forever be known as the day that I almost lost my brother, my cousins, and my own life due to the reckless decisions of a single individual.
I was just 19 years old. Exactly two months away from turning 20. It was a beautiful summer day, and my cousins were visiting us for their yearly trip from Minnesota to North Carolina. A moment I always looked forward to every year since I was an infant. My brother and I had made plans to take our cousins to visit Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville, NC; it’s a farm where you drive on a trail through acres of land and feed animals such as cows, zebras, and ostriches.
We had originally wanted to take my brother’s car since it had more room, but my brother had forgotten to get gas the day before, so we decided that I would drive us all in mine. Thinking about that now sends a shiver down my spine, wondering what our fate would have been if my brother had driven us in his car. The four of us–myself, my brother Will (17 at the time), and my two cousins Susannah and Ben (19 and 21 at the time)–all piled into my car early that morning with excitement.
If only I had known what events were to unfold after stepping into that 2009 Toyota Highlander. As we were driving down Interstate 85, the four of us sang our favorite songs at the top of our lungs. We laughed, we talked, we enjoyed each other's company, and we made the most of what little time we had to visit with each other. That was when I saw it.
I had glanced in my rearview mirror for only a second to see the flash of a moving white Jeep Wrangler coming towards us at an intense speed. There was nothing I could have done to save us. I had no time to warn my passengers. The only possible warning that could have alerted them was the loud gasp that came from my mouth.
The next thing I know, we were hit with an abrupt force and thrown off the road, tumbling up a hill. I immediately saw white. I heard glass shatter. The sound of metal crunching. Items in my car being tossed around. The grunts and screams of my cousins and brother. Glass shards scraped along my face. I felt the car flip four times. It happened all so quickly. After what seemed like ages of being tossed around, we hit a highway road sign and stopped, landing on the ceiling of the car completely upside down.
That’s when I heard the blood-curdling screams of Susannah in the passenger seat next to me. I’ve never heard anything like that in my life. To this day, she swears that she doesn’t remember screaming. In that moment, my immediate fear was that she had lost a limb, or something worse that I refuse to even think about. I can sometimes still hear her screams when thinking about that day.
As I was hanging upside down, being suffocated by my seatbelt holding me to my seat (this is your friendly reminder to ALWAYS WEAR YOUR SEATBELT), I turned to my right to see Susannah completely engulfed by the ceiling of my car. It had caved in on her, trapping her underneath. A ringing in my ears muffled the sounds of Will and Ben escaping from the back seat. All I could hear was her screams, begging to be rescued.
A rush of adrenaline and survival instincts suddenly overcame me. I unbuckled my seatbelt and fell onto my dashboard. I turned on my side and started kicking through the glass of my driver-side window, eventually crawling out. Once I had escaped, I finally got a glimpse of how bad things were on the outside.
We had completely taken out the 10-foot-tall road sign that stopped us from rolling back into the busy highway. Its green panel had folded over at a 45-degree angle, landing on top of my car, which looked like a crumpled-up piece of tin foil. What’s worse is what happened after.
The look on my brother’s face was worried sick that Susannah would die being stuck in that car. Turning around to see Ben passed out in the grass with a broken ankle and shoulder next to the car after seeing his sister in ungodly pain, and not being able to do anything about it. Traffic had completely stopped as people got out of their cars to come over and help in any way that they could. I could hear the distant sirens of first responders that were on their way to save us. The first thing I did after escaping was running over to see Susannah. There was a crowd of people surrounding the passenger side door that opened up to let me through.
What I saw will never leave my mind. Susannah was trapped, sitting upside down, with no possible way of escape. The door to the car was completely taken off, with the ceiling and bottom of the car wrapping her in a metal cocoon. I froze. I stood there in silence and shock, seeing my cousin in such a state, knowing that there was nothing I could do. “Get me the fuck out of here", she repeated. “I can’t feel anything.” I did my best to console her, and thankfully, her hearing my voice and knowing that I had escaped made her calm down. I told her she would be rescued soon and that she was going to make it out alive. Staring at the amount of blood that was coming from her injuries made me think otherwise, but I refused to believe my doubts. “She will make it, she will make it,” I told myself over and over.
After reassuring Susannah that help was on the way, I walked over to the side of the road to hug my brother. I thought to myself, “How am I walking right now?” Will was on the phone with my mom explaining what had just happened while I spoke with a police officer. We watched and waited in horror until paramedics came to take us to the hospital. I sat silently in that ambulance for 20 minutes until Susannah was freed from my car and sent to the nearest hospital via helicopter. She was in such critical condition. That was the first time I had prayed in years. I sat in that ambulance and prayed every prayer I remembered from my Episcopal church until we got to the hospital.
I heard her screams in the emergency room as her wounds were being tended to by doctors and nurses. Thank God she was alive. I was taken to a room where I was given pain medication and fluids. I had lost my phone in the crash, so I sat there silently waiting for my parents to come. That’s when a policeman came in to see me. He told me that the man who hit us had an epileptic seizure and crashed 300 yards away from where he had hit us. For comparison, that’s three football fields away from where we were hit. But here’s the kicker: he had a legally suspended license due to his epilepsy. This wasn’t the first time this has happened. He was never supposed to be driving in the first place.
To know that man was so careless and wasn't even there to witness the damage and horror that he caused. He will never understand. That is what hurts the most. To think that he could have killed all four of us. To think that I could have lost both of my cousins and my little brother due to his ridiculous and idiotic decision, against medical and legal orders, to get into his car and drive. Not only could he have killed all four of us, but he could have killed several other people that day. All in just one morning.
While I was blessed to have left the hospital that day with only a couple of scrapes and a minorly fractured vertebrae, watching both of my cousins spend days in agonizing pain at the hospital was painful in itself. During my first visit to the hospital after the crash, I brushed out glass and dirt that was still stuck in Susannah’s hair after two weeks of being admitted into the rehabilitation center.
Me, my brother, and my grandparents visiting Susannah in the hospital <3
Just a week later after the crash, I had to return to school for my sophomore year at Carolina, leaving my cousins and my brother to battle their physical and emotional troubles. While I too was fighting, I had to harbor my emotions and traumas in order to focus on school. I had to pretend like everything was okay when it wasn’t. Having to balance the mental burdens of the crash and schoolwork was absolutely daunting. It was the hardest semester of my life.
While I am eternally grateful to be given a second chance at life and to have my brother and my cousins with me, the thought of having all of that taken away from myself and my family due to one man’s careless act looms over my head every day. It haunts me.
At just the young age of 19, it was the most daunting and painful experience of my life. I would never wish it on anyone, not even my worst enemy, not even the individual who caused it to happen. I genuinely hope that one day, the person who hit us fully understands the impact of his actions and the insurmountable damage–emotionally, financially, and physically–that he has caused me and my family.
Two years later, I live to tell the tale. I have grown from my traumas, fully recovered from my minor injuries, and back to driving the exact same make and model of my old car–infamously named among my friends and I, “The Cat Mobile.” My cousins and my brother have also fully recovered and are back behind the wheel again. Our case has been fully settled and we were each given compensation. I’m going into my senior year of college and look forward to graduating in May.
I truly live by the statement, "You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough," because when you are given a second chance at life like I have been very fortunately given, you want to do it right.
The thing about near-death experiences is that they strip away the noise. In those moments, life isn’t about deadlines, resumes, or the petty things we argue over. It’s about the sheer miracle of breathing, of hearing a loved one’s laugh, of sunlight breaking through the blinds in the morning. I don’t take those things for granted anymore. I can’t. The universe reminded me how fragile my body is, and yet how resilient my spirit can be.
I often think about how close I came to not being here at all. There is a strange sort of clarity that comes from staring at the possibility of your own ending. It teaches you that time is not guaranteed, but meaning is something you get to create. We spend so much energy planning for a future that isn’t promised, when the most sacred thing we have is right now.
So I carry my crash with me. Not as a weight, but as a compass. A reminder that my purpose is not to live forever, but to live deeply. To pour myself into the people I love, to chase the things that fuel my soul, and to wake up each day with gratitude for the fact that I still can.
Me, Ben, Susannah, and Will all together in Chapel Hill one year after our crash :)
