by Marcus Altman
“It was terrifying: we were the only people there, so we had to call 911,” sophomore Katy Tufo recalled. During an innocent and carefree walk to a friend’s house, Tufo could never have imagined how stopping at a street corner to talk with her friends almost got them killed.
During her sixth grade year, Tufo and a group of her friends decided to walk from a convenience store to a friend’s house. It was a half day, and the group being together was not unusual because “we were the group of friends that always hung out,” Tufo explained.
On the way to one of the friend’s house, the group stopped to talk at a corner of the four-way intersection near Farley school. They saw two cars heading towards each other, but they thought nothing of it, until they realized that neither car was slowing down.
Tufo and her friends saw the accident progressing, but they thought that one car would just be shoved. After an apparent last-ditch effort to swerve, one car “completely spun and came towards where we were and almost hit us and crashed into a tree behind us,” Tufo said. “Almost instantly, we all just looked at each other and pushed each other back.”
“It was two old men that hit each other, and it was terrifying,” said Tufo.
The group knew that they had to call 911, and the responsibility fell on Tufo.
“I couldn’t do it,” Tufo told me. “Everyone was telling me to do it, but I gave my phone to someone else and I made him call. I was in shock, and I didn’t know what to say.”
But Tufo overcame her intense fear of the possibility of seeing blood and joined her friends in checking on the man whose car hit the tree. As they neared the vehicle, they saw that the back of the car was trashed. “It was nerve-wracking because we didn’t know what to expect. What if he was not breathing… I don’t know what I would have done,” Tufo said.
During the agonizing wait for the police, Tufo and her friends stayed with the man who got hit and talked to him. He said he was okay, but the crash had dented his door and rendered it dysfunctional. While that happened, the group noticed people coming out from the surrounding houses and checking on the status of the other driver.
“I don’t think they saw it, but they definitely heard it,” Tufo said. “When other people came out, I felt relieved because I was not the only one trying to help everybody.”
Eventually the police came, and Tufo bravely took charge by being the main person who talked to the policemen. “By then, I was out of the shocked phase. I needed to get my story straight so I could tell the police what happened. The police were very concerned, but they were not too surprised because accidents happen there all the time,” Tufo informed me.
“Honestly, if we didn’t move out of the way, we would have been hit. I still think about it a lot, even to this day. We were just walking and we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Tufo concluded.
