The Worst Kind Of Entitled Jerk

Content Warning: Fatal Car Accident

It’s around 11:00 pm on a Saturday night, and I’m sitting at home, just getting ready to go to bed. I’m an on-call tow truck operator, and I figure I’ll be going out early the next morning. Right as my head hits the pillow, my two-way radio chirps and a dispatcher speaks:

Dispatcher: “Hey, [My Name], are you still awake?”

Me: “Yeah, I’m up.”

Dispatcher: “Good. We’ve got a one-car accident in [Next Town Over.] The police department wants it expediated, so please hurry, but be safe.”

Me: “Ten-four. I’m out the door.”

After a roughly twenty-minute drive, I’m headed out of this small town looking for the accident. I see it: the coroner and forensics vans parked in the road amongst a dozen squad cars. A typical one-car accident has one officer sitting with it for paperwork reasons with the tow operator. I know things just got a lot darker than I was originally told.

What had happened was six kids between seventeen and twenty had been in an SUV while driving drunk and only the driver had a seatbelt on. The vehicle swerved off the road and the driver went to correct. However, he overcorrected, and long story short, the vehicle ended up rolling down the road in and out of the four-foot drainage ditch next to the road. All five passengers were ejected and died on the scene.

I set up my tow truck at a seventy-degree angle across this two-lane road and start to work with forensics and the coroner to remove the vehicle from the ditch as well as preserve as much evidence as possible. No sooner than I get the winch tight on my truck do I hear the frantic beeping of a car horn.

I turn around and DIRECTLY BEHIND ME is a woman in her forties who is now just holding the horn down, letting it blare nonstop as she’s yelling out of her window. I ignore her and turn around to go back to this delicate job I’m in the middle of, wondering how this woman got past the police roadblock that was roughly a third of a mile up the road at the nearest intersection to keep traffic out of the area.

As I’m slowly maneuvering this 8,000-pound vehicle from its roof onto its side, the honking stops. Maybe eight seconds later, I feel a hand grab my shoulder and attempt to spin me around. I’m 6’3” and 280 pounds, so there is absolutely no way this woman — around 5’4” and maybe 160 pounds — is achieving this goal. I let out a sigh as I stop winching on the vehicle and look at the sky, asking every god I can think of for the strength to not headbutt this woman.

I turn around.

Me: “Ma’am, the road is closed due to a fatal accid—”

Woman: *Cutting me off* “I don’t care what you have to say. Just get out of my way; I’m late!”

I’m extremely annoyed now, and I talk over the woman’s continued complaints.

Me: “LISTEN! Five people just f****** died here, and there is absolutely no way anyone is driving down this road for hours. I suggest turning around and driving back through the police roadblock you somehow got around now!“

She opens with that line that we’ve all heard a thousand times.

Woman: “Excuse me! I live right there—” *points back behind her vehicle* “—and I have to use this road to get to where I am going. You will move your truck now or I’m calling the police!”

By this time, the forensics crew has heard all the yelling over the loudness of my truck idled up and one of the forensic officers comes over. Forensics crews do not dress like police, especially in the middle of the night on the weekends. They’re dressed in plain clothes but carrying a badge on them, and they’ll put on a hazmat-style suit if needed. None were needed on this scene — just gloves and such.

Woman: “Which one of you is the manager? This man won’t move his g**d*** truck and let me through. I’m calling the police!”

She is actually holding her phone to the side of her head and talking to what we will later find out is 911.

Forensic Officer: “Ma’am, I am the police, and I don’t kno—”

Woman: “I don’t want to hear any more g**d*** excuses! MOVE. THE. F******. TRUCK. NOW.”

She claps between each word. I respond in kind.

Me: “YOU. DUMB. B****! DO. YOUR. TWO. REMAINING. BRAIN. CELLS. CONSTANTLY. COMPETE. FOR. THIRD. PLACE?”

Forensics Officer: *Stifling a chuckle* “Ma’am, if you don’t get in your car and leave this crime scene now, you will be arrested.”

Just as the forensic officer finished saying this, a squad car came screaming down the road from the same direction the woman had come from and stopped behind her vehicle. The officer hopped out of his car, and the very first words he said were the woman’s Miranda Rights.

The woman screamed, kicked, and swore that everyone else should be arrested, and she even tried to spit on me (which caused her to catch a charge for tampering with evidence, as we were on an active crime scene). By the time it was all done, her other charges were obstruction, assault on an officer, misuse of 911, and interfering with an investigation. She took a deal that netted her eighteen weekends in the county jail.

However, I did tow her car, as well. On Monday morning, I met her husband and he couldn’t have been more embarrassed. He apologized over and over as he paid me and then inspected the vehicle and signed off that we didn’t damage it. The impound cost roughly $600.