RCMP Watch

Dan Arsenault and John Gillis (Chronical Herald) - A 29-year-old Brookfield man would likely be dead if not for an off-duty Mountie who risked his life to pull the injured man off Highway 102 near Halifax early Saturday morning.

Const. Ed Clarke of Enfield RCMP had just finished a 10-hour shift and was on his way home to Halifax at about 3:30 a.m. when a northbound vehicle appeared to cross the grass median and the southbound lanes before disappearing off the highway.

Unsure whether he had seen a vehicle or just a reflection of lights on a rainy night, he watched the spot when he drove by and saw a man lying motionless on the highway just south of the Exit 7 ramp, just over a kilometre from the site of a fatal car-pedestrian collision earlier in the night.

Const. Clarke, a 29-year-old with three years on the force, pulled over about 300 metres past the man and got on the phone to RCMP dispatch.

He left his car there and started back, but it was very hard to see in the dark.

“I was using my cellphone as a light,” he said Tuesday.

While he was trying to locate the man, Const. Clarke saw an 18-wheeler approaching. The driver, seeing Const. Clarke’s car on the side of the road, pulled into the passing lane, where the man was lying.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to hit this guy.’ ”

The truck driver swerved at the last second and then pulled over. Const. Clarke said the driver asked him if what he had seen was a deer carcass. The men used a flashlight from the truck to find the man on the highway.

“I didn’t think the guy was alive at first, but then I could hear a gurgling,” Const. Clarke said. “He was still breathing slightly.”

He sent the truck driver with the flashlight to search for the vehicle he had seen go off the road.

Const. Clarke began to assess the man lying on the highway while speaking to Emergency Health Services dispatchers on the phone.

The man was bleeding from the head and EHS dispatchers warned the officer not to move him, RCMP spokesman Sgt. Mark Gallagher said.

But Const. Clarke looked up and saw another 18-wheeler coming down the highway.

That’s when he realized he didn’t have the flashlight to alert any oncoming drivers.

“I moved him maybe a couple of feet and he started moaning, so I stopped,” he said. “I look up and the truck is there and basically it missed his head by a foot and the gust (of wind) knocked me on my ass.”

Const. Clarke, who said he was ready to jump in the ditch at the last second, said the second truck driver didn’t see them and didn’t brake until he drove past them.

He said he feared for his life during the close call.

“I thought there was no way.”

Even if the driver had hit his brakes, it might have caused the tractor-trailer to jackknife, he said.

He took his T-shirt off to apply pressure to the man’s head, which was “just pouring blood.”

A smaller vehicle drove up, and Const. Clarke told the driver to block the area and put on four-way flashers until Indian Brook RCMP arrived.

The man Const. Clarke found on the highway is listed in serious but stable condition at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax.

The officer saved the man’s life, Sgt. Gallagher said.

“This 29-year-old guy would be dead now if it weren’t for him. He could have got killed doing what he was trying to do.”

The driver of the pickup truck in which the man had been a passenger fled into the woods near the highway.

Police investigators closed the highway from 5 to 8:10 a.m. to reconstruct the crash and look for anyone else who could have been in the truck.

The driver, also from Brookfield, later showed up at the QEII with several broken bones and deep cuts.

Sgt. Gallagher couldn’t say what charges, if any, might result from the investigation.

Details about Const. Clarke’s actions will go to his superiors for possible recognition.

Const. Clarke said he’s fine with the idea of getting a medal, especially given some of the bad press that colleagues in the RCMP have had recently.

“I was trying to save this guy’s life,” he said.