Posted on 07/21/2009 11:36:05 AM PDT by buccaneer81
Teen blown out of pickup dies Tuesday, July 21, 2009 2:20 PM By Holly Zachariah THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Funeral services are scheduled Thursday for a Marion teen who died in what authorities are calling a freak incident.
Shawn Fowler, 16, was riding on top of a mattress to keep it secure in the bed of a Ford F-150 pickup truck Friday night.
The truck was traveling about 25 mph westbound on Fairground Road just outside of Marion when a sudden storm blew through about 8:15 p.m., said Sgt. Michael Kasler of the Marion Post of the State Highway Patrol.
The wind caught the mattress, which wasn't tied down, and threw it and Fowler out of the truck. Fowler was taken to Grant Medical Center in Columbus and died there yesterday morning, Kasler said.
Fowler's mother, Sheila, was driving the pickup truck. The two were moving into a new home, Kasler said.
In Ohio, it is illegal to ride in the bed of a moving pickup truck only if you are age 15 or younger, Kasler said.
Fowler was a junior at Rushmore Academy in Marion, which is about 50 miles north of Columbus.
Guess I was wrong.
very sad, prayers for the family
Prime candidate for a Darwin Award.
Very sad. I think the mother gets a Darwin Award by proxy. The kid didn’t earn it himself, since he was only 16 and following his mother’s instructions.
Is it terrible of me to be suspicious? They were only driving 25 and a sudden storm blew over? I wonder if they were stupidly driving 60 and the wind caught under the mattress. For that matter, if I was driving a mattress in the back of a pickup, with no cover on it, and a midwest summer thunderstorm blew in, I’d probably drive faster too.
The mother, not the son.
Same thing happened to someone I knew in college - he ended up brain-damaged.
Sad, but this poor kid was taken out by the true Darwin candidate..his mother. She should have know better. RIP
Why didn’t he hang on to the mattress and land on it?
Wow! Good thing for Mom that that he turned 16, no ticket!
Sad. Can only imagine what the mother is going through.
Why does the peanut butter side of the bread land on the carpet?
But as a road patrol officer I once followed,at some distance, a family that had three teenagers sitting on the tailgate while going down the road. It wasn't illegal at the time,just stupid and risky.Tumbling to the pavement or gravel at even 15 mph is painful.
Certain things just seem to work as particularly good sails in a sudden wind. I saw a guy on a roofing job carrying a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood get blown off a roof when he was hit by a sudden gust of wind. Fortunately, he just broke an ankle, but things could have been much worse.
I've seen clips of people on youtube jumping over moving cars. Way cool. But what's the worst that could happen? Oh, yeah: you could die.
People need to grow up thinking, "Sure, I could do this, but what are the risks?" In many cases the risk are obvious and terrible but it's clear that the principal particiant doesn't spend 2 seconds thinking "What could go wrong?"
I’m going to assume that since it seems to be a single mother and teen son moving themselves in their pickup, they are not well off financially. They probably felt they couldn’t afford the equipment, cheap as it might be, to tie down the mattress, so thought the weight of his body would do the job. I think it’s very sad.
Dr. G. Medical Examiner specifically referred to holding a mattress down on the top of a car as the stupidest way to die. When she created that scenario I thought that no one would do something so incredibly dumb. Geez—couldn’t they have bought a rope?
Don’t use yourself as dead weight in the back of a moving pick up truck. I’ve ran into this scenario a couple of times over the years and stopped it from happening every time. Look for charges against the mother, the mattress probably bounced him out...
Geeze, poor kid. Of course, I’m sure the mother was just exercising her right to have an abortion in the 67th trimester.
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