Chapter 1 - The Van Through the Fence
I pulled over when I saw the Amazon van through the fence.
It was about four o’clock on February 5, 2025, and I had been driving along County Road 2152 without any reason to expect trouble.
For a moment, I stayed behind my steering wheel, looking for someone standing beside the wreck.
Nobody waved.
I put my flashers on, took out my phone, and called for help.
When the dispatcher asked where I was, I gave the road number and described the fence and the van as carefully as I could.
“I didn’t see it happen,” I said.
That was the first thing I knew for certain, and I kept coming back to it afterward.
I had seen the result, not the crash.
With the phone against my ear, I got out and looked toward the vehicle.
I expected a driver to answer when I called out.
Instead, I heard my own voice carry across the roadside.
I moved only far enough to check whether someone needed help, watching where I put my feet near the broken fence.
Then I saw her in the ditch.
“There’s a woman down here,” I told the dispatcher.
My voice came out much louder than I intended.
She was young, though I couldn’t have said how young, and she was badly hurt.
I could see that she was breathing.
I remember lowering myself beside her and trying to make my hands stop shaking long enough to hold the phone properly.
“I’m here,” I told her.
“Help is coming.”
I didn’t know whether she could hear me.
The dispatcher asked questions, and I answered what I could without moving her.
When I couldn’t tell something, I said so.
I wanted instructions I could carry out, something useful that would make those minutes pass differently for her.
Mostly, I stayed close, watched her breathing, and kept the line open.
I didn’t recognize a gunshot injury.
I didn’t know there had been a weapon anywhere near that road.
I thought I had come upon a terrible wreck, and every question in my head belonged to a wreck.
Had another vehicle been involved?
Had she tried to get out?
I had no answers, and she couldn’t give me any.
When the emergency responders arrived, I stood and moved back as soon as they asked.
One of them took my place beside her.
I gave the information I had already given over the phone, suddenly afraid I would leave out something important simply because someone else was there now.
Then I stepped out of their way.
Watching trained people work should have settled me, but my hands were still trembling when I put my phone in my coat pocket.
I later learned they took her to Mercy Hospital Joplin.
At the roadside, I knew only that she was being taken somewhere people could do more than I could.
A deputy asked me to explain how I had found her.
I pointed to where I had stopped and described walking toward the van before noticing her in the ditch.
He asked whether I had seen her leave the vehicle.
“No,” I said.
I looked back toward the damaged fence, wanting the distance between the van and the ditch to explain itself.
“I found her there.”
He waited while I tried to find anything else I could honestly add.
There wasn’t anything.
“I don’t know how she got out.”
