My wife and I were coming home from church last night when we came up behind a couple of vehicles. The one directly in front of us was a small pickup truck; and in front of them was a Ford Taurus [Though I did not know that until later. We were too far in the back to tell]. The lady in the Taurus was driving slowly; about 40, maybe less; and she was driving into the Southbound lane of Highway 39 (we were headed North). At times there was on coming traffic and there were several near misses.
The lady in the Taurus nearly ran in the ditch at one point, and my thought was that that was a good place for her before someone was seriously hurt. The people in the small truck was afraid to get too close and kept putting on their hazard lights. We got into Barry County, and about a mile into the county she actually hit the ditch on the West side of the road, did some pretty lively bouncing, veered back onto the road into the correct lane, and just shortly pulled into a driveway.
The small truck and us stopped. The passenger [a woman] of the small truck got out and she was a bit shaken from seeing what all happened. I was more angry than shaken. I was almost sure that this individual was drunk. I went over to the car, and the woman driving got out wondering what had happened. “This is a friends car.” She said. “Is it badly damaged?” I was talking to her, and noticed that I was the only one standing there with her. All the others had left the scene.
She did not have any smell of alcohol on her. I found out later that she had taken some kind of sleep medication, taken her friends car without permission, and now the car is damaged. This woman did not even know where she was.
After I wrote out a statement for the Sheriff’s department I left the scene, and she was taken away in a patrol car.
You could say that was an eventful evening. I am glad and thankful that the woman was not hurt or injured and that no one else was either.
I was not on the banks of Flat Creek when this happened, but fairly near.
-Tim
Flat Creek Rolling 