Unexpected tragedies…

There are things in life which are to be expected, or at the very least, it is not surprising when they do take place. However, there are the outliers, those events that are seemingly rare and are quite shocking when they do occur. Just this day I found out about such an event which, to say the least, I found to be most unusual. But before I describe it, I will liken to my analogies of dangerous animals. This includes those that are obviously deadly and those that are regarded as harmless, or at least not really capable of killing someone. Most everyone knows that a hiker running into a grizzly bear, especially a sow with cubs, is a grave situation that has the possibility of turning fatal. Bears are large, powerful animals with deadly weapons that can easily rub out a human. But what about a stingray? These are sea creatures that can, as their name implies, deliver a painful sting, usually to the feet of people who unknowingly step on them. Yet almost no one would ever have thought them to be lethal. That was, until Steve Irwin (aka the “Crocodile Hunter”) was speared thru the heart by the barb of a stingray in a freak accident. That incident shocked the world, as surely anyone who watched that show would have logically assumed that Irwin might have ended up dying from a snake bite. Venomous snakes, especially some Australian species, are on the extreme end of lethality. For someone who regularly interacts with such creatures, the odds are very high that they will be bitten. And they might even die before being able to reach help. But stingrays are not seen as deadly, and indeed they rarely ever kill people. There are accounts of people being killed by animals that are not thought of as dangerous, but these are rare and very shocking when they take place.

This past Monday morning such a freak event happened not too far from me, perhaps about an hour or so away. I happened to see a news article about it come up in my feed yesterday evening. The main subject of this article is an obscure but well traversed stretch of road that is located over the Susquehanna River in Maryland which carries the northbound lanes of Interstate 95. Just before noon Monday morning, an apparently stalled vehicle was reported on the shoulder of one of the lanes. This vehicle was abandoned there in the roadway, with no driver or passenger in sight. Then, emergency calls came in reporting that someone had jumped into the river below. This section of freeway was shut down for several hours, as police searched for the missing person. Eventually they pulled a dead man out of the frigid water not far from this crossing. It was a stingray so to speak, rather than a taipan, that enabled the demise of this unfortunate individual yesterday morning. That which is apparently harmless (or at worst, only mildly injurious) suddenly becomes a lethal entity, much to everyone’s surprise.

The Millard Tydings Memorial Bridge is an unremarkable under deck truss bridge that was built in the early 1960’s, looking so much like many of its mid 20^th century kin. None of its framework can be seen by driving across it, and all around it is very pedestrian and common place, even to bridge aficionados. Perhaps the only thing for which it is noteworthy is the ridiculously high toll that motorists are charged to cross it. This middling metal monster lacks the grandeur and scale of its neighbor the Delaware Memorial Bridge, as it isn’t very long and only stands about ninety feet above the river. Like the the stingray that killed Steve Irwin, I would never have suspected this bridge of being a means to someone’s self-demise, nor would a fall from it necessarily be capable of killing. The height of the road deck, roughly one hundred feet or so, is still within the survivable height range. I am not sure about the river depth, but it is sufficient for small and medium sized boats to navigate beneath it. Of course, a fall from that height into the water could be lethal in some circumstances, as it obviously was Monday morning. Unless the victim could not swim and then possibly succumbed to hypothermia and drowned. But there is also the likelihood of such a jumper surviving, perhaps with serious and debilitating injuries. Yes, a stingray can kill, but usually only if you get hit dead on in a vital organ, which rarely happens – until it did, quite infamously. Irwin had no intention at all of meeting his maker that day, while the man on the bridge clearly intended to forfeit his life. But regardless, that which should not be lethal indeed proved to be so.

But the real surprise, and the mystery here, is why did the victim choose this middling bridge? Why not drive further north into Delaware and take the plunge from the mighty green monster’s summit? The Key Bridge is gone, and the Bay Bridge must have been too far south for this victim to want to access. Either way, it seems that he got the result that he desired. But why jump into the lynx’s cage when the lion’s cage is nearby? Trying plumb the minds of those who seek out their own demise, especially in this way, is often futile. Even if you know the person, even then you can usually only speculate at best in the absence of a note. There is a guess as to why the Key Bridge jumper did the unthinkable, but it is only a guess. The Tydings Memorial Bridge is one that I would have never suspected of being an instrument in such fatalities. I must admit that when I drove across it last summer on the way to Wildwood, New Jersey, I briefly wondered if anyone had ever jumped off of it. Once I crossed it, I quickly surmised that such a thing would never happen (and never ever did happen). But little did I know…. a minor monster lurks along interstate 95 in the north eastern corner of Maryland. I wonder how many more lives have been lost there in the past?