Speaker 1: The accident that didn't happen. On October fifth, nineteen sixty nine,
Elson Brooks, an editor for the Fort Worth Star Telegram,
was driving his family to the State Fair in Dallas.
At one point in round, Brooks checked his rear view
mirror and saw a frightening sight. A white Chevrolet, traveling
at highway speed had suffered a tire blowout. Thicker had
began to fish tail wildly. Still hurtling along at more
than sixty miles per hour, it traveled back and forth
across all three lanes of traffic. Other motorists had their
eyes glued to the scene as they veered away from
harm's way. There were at least five people, including Brooks,
who watched in horror as the door of the Chevrolet
flipped open and the driver was thrown out on the pavement.
The gruesome scene took one more turn for the worse
as the out of control car spun around and skidded
over the body of its ejected driver. Don't look back,
Brooks instructed his family. He was sure that even he
lacked the stomach necessary to survey the accident scene. Fortunately,
he had spotted a police cruiserparked on the shoulder of
the road ahead, Brooks pulled over and got out of
his car. Is this about the accident, the officer asked,
before Brooks had even had the chance to speak. He nodded.
Apparently another driver had already flgged the police car down
and reported the horrible crash. The officer jumped into his cruiser,
set the siren wailing, and roared back onto the highway.
The Brooks family carried on to spend their day at
the fair, although not one of them was capable of
enjoying it. That evening, Elston Brooks found that he couldn't
forget the incident, especially the mental image of the man
being crushed by his car. He decided to get more
information about it, so he called his office to see
what details the Star telegram had been given. He was
shocked to discover that they had no information about the
accident once soever. In the morning, when there was still
no report of the newspaper office, Brooks called the police.
What they told him was incredible. They had no accident
recorded on file, but did have statements from four other
people who had seen the driver being thrown from the
white Chevrolet. Brooks was confounded and asked to speak with
the officer to whom he had reported the accident. Patrolman
David Fisher had been the cop at the scene. He
had spoken to Brooks and one other motorist about the crash,
and had heard other reports of it come across his radio.
When he had ventured back down the highway, however, Fisher
found nothing out of the ordinary. There is a man
and a white Chevrolet pulled over to the side of
the road. He said the guy was fixing a flat
Aside from that petrolman Fisher had seemed nothing to suggest
that there had been an accident. He had turned around
and headed back toward Dallas. As he retraced his route,
he noticed that the car the flat tire had gone
on its way. No one involved in the bizarre incident
could offer an explanation, but Elston Brooks offered a vivid description.
He called it a horror story with a happy ending,
and he couldn't have been more correct.