September 30, 2025 • 41 mins
After hitting Kjersten Strang on her Ebike with such force her body lands wedged in the windshield of his Nissan Altima, Xavier Rigby, 22, continues driving with the single mom embedded in his windshield.
Finally, after eight blocks, her body dislodges from the windshield and lands on the ground, but Rigby doesn't stop, he keeps driving.
He is captured a mile away at a closed liquor store!
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look at the vehicle vs bicycle story and Joe explains how investigators will determine what happened and where, even when the crime scene is 8 blocks long.
Transcribe Highlights
00:02.52 Introduction
00:31.09 Learning to drive
04:20.61 Kjersten Strang hit riding bike, lands in windshield
09:25.84 Driver continues driving
13:59.45 Accident investigation course
18:18.40 Car hit rear tire of bike
22:56.58 Looking for pieces of body
27:03.60 Suicide by vehicle
31:31.94 Pimp hit by cab
35:39.82 Fatal Vehicle vs Bicycle crash
39:47.92 Woman has armed ripped off body
41:35.31 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Bats with Joseph Scott More. One of the toughest
things I had to learn when I was growing up
was how to drive. And let me tell you why
it was hard for me. I was not allowed to
drive an automatic transmission car. I had to drive a
manual transmission. And I had one individual who was my
(00:26):
stepfather that was attempting to teach me, and anytime I
screwed up, that was met with the back of his hand,
and he was constantly frustrated by the idea that I
couldn't get the hang of the clutch. And to make
matters worse, I had saved my money and actually bought
(00:47):
a nineteen sixty eight Mustang and he had three speed transmissions.
I had to learn how to drive this thing. Who
doesn't want one in nineteen sixty eight Mustang with a
three speed transmission. So it was a very frustrating time
for me. But you know, I had a friend of
mine that I grew up with, and he's a friend
(01:08):
of the family. He said, let me take him out.
I'll have him driving, you know, within just a couple hours,
And sure enough, we went out to this huge church
that had a massive parking lot and we just we
had that thing. It looked like it was in a rodeo.
It's like a horse just bucking back and forth. But
sooner or later I got the hang of it. That's
the thing about driving a manual transmission. It becomes secondary
(01:31):
after a while, but you know there's a lot going
on there. You really have to be focused, you know,
anticipating hills and anticipating people that are maybe in front
of you. You have to gear down. It's not like
an automatic transmission. It's going to kind of slow you
down a little bit. How much more so do you think, though,
when you're driving down the road and you have not
(01:56):
only your life that you're looking out for to protect,
but let's face it, you're trying to protect the lives
of others that are in your path. All it takes
is to take your eyes off the road, or all
it takes is for an individual take one more head
(02:16):
of coke or one more sip of alcohol, and people's
lives are ruined forever and ever. Today, owned bodybacks, we're
going to talk about one such case that has recently
hit the news, and I got to tell you it
s as depraved as just about anything out there that
(02:38):
we cover. Coming to you from the beautiful campus of
Jacksonville State University. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Bodybacks Dave mac We had this case come across our
desk collectively. It's been in the news and it was
(03:02):
a reminder I think of other cases that are not
too dissimilar where an automobile has been a guess essentially
turned into a weapon and weaponized. Now, whether or not
it was intentionally turned into a weapon, I can tell
you it was lethal machinery, if you'll put it that way, Yeah,
(03:27):
it was a lethal weapon, Joe.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
When I was a kid and we had I lived
in a state where two things One, if you wanted
to be driving at sixteen, you had to take Driver's
ed and we also used high school students as school
bus drivers. You could take the school bus driving class
and learn to be a school bus driver with your
(03:48):
learners permit, which is what I did. I actually learned, really,
I learned to drive stick shift on a school bus
manual transmission with no power steering. After learning to drive
stick on a school bus, believe me, driving a three
speed anything is pretty much a piece of cake. But
in this particular case, here friends this case hit us
hard because, first ofly, you got a thirty eight year
(04:10):
old mom who is on her e bike ten o'clock
at night, Saint Petersburg, Florida, when Xavier Digby, twenty two
years old, comes flaming down the street drunk and hits
her from behind.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
He hit the back. She was in a bike lane.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
You know, there are communities all over around the world,
all around our country in particular, where they have a
bike lane. It's just for e bikes and bicycles and
cars don't drive in that lane.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
It's just for bikes.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
She was in the bike lane when this young man
came behind her and hit her on the back.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Tire hit her so hard, Joe.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
She came flying through the windshield, flying through the wind,
her body dense the hood of the car and bam,
she is wedged in the windshield.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Now, Joe, for most of us, hitting something is going
to make you slam on the brakes. Oh my gosh,
what just happened. Xavier Digby didn't stop. Thirty eight year
old Kirsten Stang is in his windshield. He keeps driving.
He keeps driving for eight blocks. Joe, she fell out
(05:27):
of the car, out of the windshield something. He hit
a bump pahole. It jarred her loose and her body
fell to the roadway. He didn't stop to check on her.
He kept driving. It was other citizens who were horrified
by what they were seeing, and when they saw the
poor woman's body fall off the car, they stopped and
called police. Now it was quite the spectacle seeing him
(05:48):
driving down the road. People saw it. They're calling for
help and so helped it arrive. But Kirsten Strang did
not survive. This guy kept driving, Joe. They did locate
him about a mile away. He was it a liquor store.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Wow, what a shock.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It was closed, but he was sitting in the parking lot,
either waiting for them to open or trying to figure
out how to get in. That's the story we're talking
about today.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, it's amazing to me. How And I don't know
why I would even say amazing or why would be shocked.
I think I'd like to have people believe that that
I still have that bit of humanity within me. But Dave,
I got to tell you, brother, the longer we go,
the it's it's spinning down the drain. You know, you
(06:42):
think about these cases and Listen. This is not the
first time that we have had a case over the
years where something like this happens. I'm reminded actually of
the two young men that I don't know if you
were called. Do you remember this case where the two
young men ran down a call them men losing using
(07:03):
that term loosely. They ran down the guy who's a
retired police officer on his bicycle and ran him over
and killed him. And they did it for their own
personal entertainment. Yeah. That that that is true weaponization of
a car, you know, of an automobile, and you know,
you have things like this that happened. You know, I
(07:23):
think that automobiles in particular, they can make people, even
even the uh maybe the most fainthearted among us, seem
very brave. You know, when you get behind some beast
out there driving down the road and you're traveling sixty
sixty five miles per hour and you feel completely protected,
(07:47):
maybe you fly off the handle. Maybe you think you're
gonna be safe in there. If you're you know, if
you're a quote unquote pulling a cork, you know before
you mount up in your car, maybe you're doing it
while you're going down the road, whatever the case might be,
but it changes people in that environment and even you know,
and this is not I don't know that we can
(08:07):
necessarily say that this is a case of road rage
per se, but just think about how many times and
I look, I'm chief among centers. I'll sit here and
I will tell you I gotta go ask forgiveness because
I have let it fly, you know, going down the
road when somebody is you know, cuts me off or
(08:31):
to end the story is as old as time. But
you know, you're embolden when you're inside of a vehicle
like this, and it's an amazing dynamic. I think, whereas
if you were just going down the road and maybe
you're jogging down the road, or maybe you're riding your
bike down the road and you're in the same lane
with her, even if you're drunk, or are you going
(08:53):
to try to drive your shoulder into her, you know,
into this poor woman and kill her. Are you going
to try to bumper off the road with your bicycle?
Probably not. I think it's just the idea of being
in a vehicle. We're completely encapsulated in the steel and
glass bubble and you feel like you can do anything
you want. And you're not gonna actually, no harm is
going to come to you. But this poor woman who's
(09:15):
a single mother's life is completely snuffed out.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So many you know what, it's not just her, it's
her son and her mother because now her son will
be taken care of by grandma. And you know the
dynamic that just changed because somebody got behind the wheel
drunk and drove. But Joe, when I saw this story,
I might I was thinking about you because I wonder
do police call when you have an accident? This isn't
(09:40):
an accident. This is this is going to be a
body in the street that has been hit by a car.
And the story you're gonna get is going to be
peeled together by it because it's eight blocks long before
she fell off the car.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Joe, So you've got the bike back at impact.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I'm gonna I'm going to assume now as the investigator,
you're going to to be called. I would hope called
to the scene when god forbid, they knew she was dead.
When you know she died on the scene, she wasn't.
She didn't die at the hospital. Do they call you then?
Do they call an investigator?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Right now? We have a dead body in the street.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, okay, yeah, And.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
What are you going to do?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Though, Well, it's a weird thing. You know, we hadn't
really talked about this much on you know, we're we're
heading toward five hundred episodes now, and I know that
we've had cases involving automobiles, but I don't know that
I really kind of peel back the uh, the skin
on this thing relative to what we do, you know,
in the medical examiner corner world when it comes to
(10:36):
motor vehicle accidents. But we spend you know, I probably
spend as much time on car accident scenes as I
did at homicide scenes over the years.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And would this be considered a homicide?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
That's an interesting question. I'm glad you brought it up.
And here's why. This is one of those cases where
you will have a medical examiner, which in Florida, of course,
we're talking about Saint Pete in Florida, where they don't
have corners, so they have medical examiners. They have the
states actually broken into districts kind of like the way
(11:10):
it's set up, tell the truth, and then you have
the police that are two separate investigations here. So the
goal of the medical examiner is to rule this as
a whatever manner it's going to be. You know, the
cause of death is going to be pretty pretty obvious.
It's going to be massive blunt force trauma. I can
(11:31):
tell you that without having the autopsy report in front
of me, she's going to probably sustain massive head trauma.
She might even have what's called a flail chest if
she was impacted on a bike, which means her ribs
are literally going to be floating where bilally fractured, may
be punctured long dependent upon where the point of impact is.
If she's seated like this on a bike, maybe pelvic fractures,
(11:56):
spinal fractures, you know this source, and not to mention
the blunt trauma to her internal organs. Many times, what
you'll see I've seen, let's see, I've seen lacerated kidneys,
spleens and particular spleens are very fragile, you bleed out
from them. But probably the biggest one is going to
be the liver. And you know, with that kind of impact,
(12:18):
but you go out to the scene and you're still
going to work this as a crime scene. Here's the rub,
you know, for a medical examiner to rule a motor
vehicle event as a homicide. You're going to have to
prove to that attending pathologists forensic pathologist, that there is
(12:42):
intent okay, because they might rule this and I would
say probably a significant percentage of medical examiners out there
that would do this autopsy you are going to rule
this as an accident day. They're not going to rule
this as a homicide. Whereas with the authorities with the
police department. You know, with canon of law, depending upon
(13:02):
what states you're in, you can have vehicular homicide, you
can have negligent I mean, there's all there's this litany
of various degrees or charges that you can hook an
individual up on. So we're going to conduct a death investigation.
When we arrive out there, we'll be working with the
accent investigators, who, by the way, if you've never been
(13:25):
in the company of a true accident investigator, they are
the unsung heroes in forensics. Just the mathematics alone to
be certified. I was down at the State Police Academy
in Georgia many years ago taking classes. You know that
I would periodically and I would see these poor guys
(13:47):
would that we're going through the accent investigation and it
was a multi stage course that you had to go through,
and you had to have a baseline understanding of physics
in order to make it through it. And these guys
would be sweating this class. I mean, it really really difficult.
But they are brilliant. And if you find one that's
good at what they do, they're amazing. They can they
(14:10):
can tell you so much about the dynamics of vehicle
on vehicle, vehicle on person. They can even factory in
weather conditions, road surface conditions. Amazing, amazing investigators. And I
always enjoyed work because you know, it's like when you're
around really bright people, you kind of some of it
(14:33):
might slough off on you. You might be privileged enough
just to have a bit of their knowledge drip down
onto you. And I would learn something every time I
was out with them. But you know, their investigation is
going to be trying to decide whether or not they're
going to charge this person that did this. Our investigation
is going to surround you know, obviously the cause of death,
(14:53):
which you know is going to be pretty obvious, but
then you get into this kind of ticklish area where
you're trying to site are you going to call this
a homicide? Are you going to call this an accident?
And I think that you know, the classic definition of
homicide is that it's generally defined as death at the
hand of another. It makes sense, right, you know, it's
(15:16):
a homicide. You're not judging anybody. You know, it's death
at the hand of another. It's pretty simplistic. It's very clinical,
you know when you hear it. But for some reason
there are a lot of medical examiners out there that
will rule these cases as accidental deaths. They're going to
want to have like many times they'll they'll won't I've
heard them use the term specific intent. They're they're going
to want to say, Okay, did this person actually weaponize
(15:39):
this vehicle and say I'm going to go out with
the intention of running this person over and killing them.
And so that's that's kind of the hill you have
to climb with with with pathologists in this in this
in this dynamic.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Between driving down the road and a guy cuts you off.
You're riding a bike and you go into a sub
the rate that has the water drain, and you go
over the handlebars and you master your melon and he
keeps on trucking. You know, that's an accident. He doesn't
even know you fell, you know, it just happens. That's
an accident. This is a guy who got behind the
wheel of the car drunk, knew he was drunk when
he got behind it. Because by the way Xavier, the
(16:18):
suspect in this case, I should say alleged, I guess
he was charged with Adrian Rigby allegedly got behind the
wheel drunk, and Rigby was allegedly more than twice drunk.
And Xavier Rigby had already done this before and pled
it out of a dui. Xavier Rigby is such a
risk to humanity on the road that the judge actually
(16:40):
sat him with a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars bond.
But I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, Joe, she's
in the bike lane. It's ten o'clock at night, and
he has to be out of his lane and into
the bike lane. But then he has to hit her
with such force. Now I'm not a mathematician, but I
have on a k tried to be a test crash dummy.
(17:02):
A crash test dummy, what are you gonna call him?
But I'm thinking, all right, he's driving and he hits
the back tire of her bike, and he moves that
bike with such force that she lets go. Okay, her
hands are off the wheel and her body then the
bike gets pushed out of the way and her body
now is in the windshield. Right, That's what happened and
(17:28):
the impact of that. For most of us, we would
know we hit something and we would stop. First thing,
go to the When you see a pine cone dropped
from a tree in the street, you hit the brakes.
You know, we see something, we see a cup in
the road, We hit the brakes because you don't even
know what else there could be.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
But this guy doesn't hit the brakes. He hits the
gas and he doesn't.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Just yeah, and so you're transferring. You're transferring, literally transferring
that energy from the vehicle to the back of that bike,
because he would have made contact with the rear of
that bike first, you know, as as stated, and you're
right about the dynamic of this thing, potentially because the bike.
You know, you've got two separate, two separate entities here,
(18:15):
all right. You've got the bicycle and you've got her.
They're both traveling through space together. They're traveling at a
known speed. All right. The vehicle though, is creating its
own energy as it's going down the road, and that
energy is going to be transferred into the rear tire
of that bike. Now, the inertia of this thing and
(18:37):
the dynamic of it, and it's it's really kind of
interesting because she's riding on a bicycle, the tire, the
rear tire is making contact with the road. That's now prohibitive. Okay,
so what happens. Let me just ask you this. This
is a question that just about any well in our
(18:59):
generation ten year old boy could answer. What happens if
you were to throw on the brakes of your bike
and lift the handlebars up at the same time, Well,
you're going to go backwards. You're stopping at that point
in time, and you're almost like popping a will at wheelie. Right.
But the problem is is that now this car is
moving forward, it's got the tire, it's captured, and it's
(19:22):
the cars continuing forward. The tire is being mashed, and
so she's going to travel backwards at this point in time,
you know, kind of literally kind of catapulting her backwards.
And the idea that she impacted this windshield, Dave is
arguably one of the most gruesome things that you can
even think about. But hey, you know what, her death.
(19:47):
I hope, I hope against hope that was sudden. But
you know, there's always that outside chance that if you
saw it happen, if you were the cause of it,
you have at least some semblance of humanity within your
soul to want to stop and render aid instead of
(20:09):
trucking on down to the local package store. I got
to tell you this, Other than fire scenes, no no, no, no, no.
(20:33):
I never felt really safe at fire scenes. But I
have to say, Dave, motor vehicle accidents. I'm you know,
I'm talking about me personally right now. Motor vehicle accidents.
I was always terrified on them. I've actually seen investigators
get hit brushed particularly, I've seen firefighters get brushed by cars.
(20:59):
And you have to consider where I finish my career
up Atlanta, which is a nightmare in a traffic environment.
I've been on too eighty five, which is the big
ring refur to.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Judge called to eighty five the Georgia Audubon.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, yeah, years ago, you know, And it's weird. Either
you'll see one or two things happen out there. Either
people will be going so fast that they just kind
of melt into the background and you like you see
them rush by, or it's a parking lot, and sometimes
that can you know, you can be stuck in a
parking lot in ON two on I two eighty five
(21:35):
in Atlanta at one o'clock in the morning. You know,
that's that's the way it is because the volume of traffic,
that's the only thing. It's not necessarily because the population
of Atlanta. It's it's the confluence of I twenty, I
seventy five, and I eighty five, all of the all
of those highways there's Interstate. They intersect in Atlanta, I
(21:58):
mean literally crisscross each other. So you got three major
vessels in that city, and it made there were a
lot of motor vehicle access. I went out on and worked,
but there was I would have to say that I
was more afraid from my personal safety on highways than
any other time, because you know, you're trying to focus
(22:19):
on what's before you relative and you're taking a look
at things like the skid marks that are left behind
on the road as somebody's supplying the brakes. You're looking
for a broken glass you're looking, you're looking for bits
of the body, which happened quite a bit. I've had
cases where people hit so hard that you'll have multiple
traumatic amputations, you know, out of the scene. And don't
(22:43):
even started on train accidents because those are really really brutal.
But we're talking about autos here. But there was always
that thing in the back of my mind where I
felt like somebody's going to slide into us and hit
us because people don't pay attention, you know. And the
other thing is they're drawn to the lights, right they're
nosing nellies, you know, lots of times if you get one,
(23:04):
and if you get one person that's not a nosy
nelly and they're on their phone or whatever they're doing,
and they're so distracted, you wind up with multiple people
injured or even somebody else killed. It's a very dangerous
environment to get in. That's why like accident investigators cops
in general, particularly traffic traffic officers, a tip of the
(23:25):
cap to them, man, because I got to tell you,
it is a dangerous job. I mean, it's very dangerous
being out there working motor vehicle accidents. You know. I've
had police officer friends that have been hit that we're
directing traffic. Again, that's a police people don't think about
that as a very dangerous, dangerous side job. If it's
(23:46):
a side job, it's a very dangerous job if you've
been assigned to it. You know, motor cops guys on motorcycles. Again,
it looks really cool. You're thinking that you're you know
that you're Eric, Eric is straw to you know your chips,
you know, and yeah, yeah, Willcox and you know you're
(24:08):
you're out there. It looks really cool, but it's it's
a very dangerous occupation. So you know, you you think
about that environment and not just that, but it's being
displayed before you. Your humanity picks up on this because
you're you're thinking to yourself, Okay, I'm out here, and
this person has painted the roadway with their blood okay,
(24:30):
or their organs. This happens a lot, and you're thinking,
my lord, this could happen to me out here, And
I know that sounds weird. You know, you would think
that you'd be very fearful out on like a homicide
where there's been major gun play or something like that.
Most of the time, so I've been shot at before
most of the time when you're out there, the parties
(24:53):
have dispersed. At that point in time, cars cars don't disperse.
World keeps on turning, and so we you know, I
think that probably probably as far as traumatic events in America,
I'm almost positive this as a matter of fact, I
know I am. As far as trauma related deaths, motor
(25:15):
vehicle accents outpace everything else. You know, firearms, knives, bludgeons,
you know, anything like that. You know, Joe, motor vehicle
actions kill more people.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, And oftentimes when I think about a car accident,
I don't I don't go immediately to the fatality because
that's not been my role in life. It's been people
have a vendor bender, you call insurance and move on.
But your life, when it comes to a wreck, it's
you're right, I remember you know you were talking about
the those who are the first ones on the scene.
You know, those first responders. You're the last responder and
(25:49):
by the time you're out there to try to figure
out what happened. That's why the traffic is moving again,
because you know, when they're in the midst of cleaning
it up, it's pretty much out of standstill, creeping along.
But once it's moved off to the side, people are
now trying to make up for lost time. It didn't
occur to me how scary they would be. Have you
ever changed a tire? Everyone changing a tire on the
interstate when people are driving eighty plus miles an hour
(26:10):
by and you're eight feet away trying to change a
tire's That was when I when I had to do that,
I went, oh, my gosh, Now I know why this
is so dangerous. You don't think about it when you're driving,
but now I'm thinking, you're out there, You're trying to
figure out what happened. It's going to be probably at night,
everybody's flying down the road trying to make up for
lost time because they sat in traffic for the last
(26:30):
hour and a half. Holy moly, what is I I
kind of promise you I'd never ask worst case scenario
or worst thing you've ever seen when it comes to
an automobile thing.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Joe, do you have you have a list of worst Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yeah, I got yeah, there's crazy, it's yeah, it's you
see so much stuff because you know, in the medical
legal world relative to motor vehicles, because first off, the
dynamic you're talking about a hot speed event many times,
and it could take all forms. I've had homicides committed
with motor vehicles. I've had suicides committed with motor vehicles,
(27:05):
people driving into fixed objects. That doesn't matter of fact
how time is dependent though, Uh, well, you have to
go back and go into you know, what was their intent,
you know, any suicidal ideation, vocalization where they end their
psychiatric care, where they depressed and all this stuff. Yeah,
and then you know you have people that, you know,
(27:26):
just the really tough ones to prove are people that
have pre existing medical conditions that maybe they have a
heart attack or a diabetic event and they run off
the road and to kill somebody else. That does happen,
you know, I've had I know of one case in
Atlanta that was actually on two a five where a
guy was passed out at the wheel and he was
(27:49):
driving I guess it was like forty to forty five
miles per hour and leaned over in the seat and
wound up and people had seen him go for miles
like this. The car is stayed on the road. My
guy finally ran off and hit hit a bridge abutment.
He was dead. And the question is was he dead
when he hit the bridge or was he did the
impact killed him because he had trauma. But yeah, so
(28:12):
you know, I think about what we refer to, you know,
with with this poor woman down and Saint Pete. This
is what you call a cabin intrusion is and it's
just a fancy way of saying that, you know, something
entered the cabin of the car. Now that can be
you know, an object that you know, like one of
(28:35):
these idiots that takes rocks and throws them off of bridges,
cinder blocks, all of these kids that do it and
then sit back and laugh after they've done it. You
can you can have animals. I've had friends of mine
that have I've never have, but I've had friends of
mine that have work cases where you have you have
(28:58):
animals that will come through windshields deer. There was a
gray old picture we had in our in our collection
of black and white down in New Orleans, where lady
had hit and this was back in the fifties. I'll
never forget it. The image just stayed with me. Hit
a mule and the mule came through the windshield and
(29:18):
killed her. And that that does happen. People think that
it doesn't, and then you have people that come through
windshields and that's that's cabin intrusion. Probably. I think one
of the most bizarre cases, Dave was actually a case
that I worked in New Orleans that involved domestic violence
(29:39):
of all things. You had a guy who had worked
as a pimp and he had a huge, like late
seventies and Lincoln town car, the kind that had the
retractable lights or the lights kind of lift up on
the front, and it was all pimped out. I mean
it was you know, it was a really nice car,
(30:01):
you know, if that's your sort of thing. He had
this young lady in the car with him that was
his quote unquote girlfriend that he had been knocking around,
and of course she was more than a girlfriend, she
was a meal ticket and he had several of these women.
But anyway, he got into a fight going down to
I Ten with her, reached over and gave her a
(30:21):
right cross while he's going down the road and hit
her in the jaw. She grabbed the steering wheel at
the same time and pulled the car over into the
side of the road and bailed. Well, he was shocked
that she did this. She literally goes out of the
car and runs and at this point in ten I
(30:43):
ten is like, let me get this straight. It's either
eight or ten lanes across, and it's people are cooking
on this thing. And she makes it across all of
the westbound lanes and gets to the divider, jumps over
the divider, and makes it across the other lanes heading east.
(31:04):
This rocket scientist gets out of the car, goes around it.
He makes it to the fourth I think it was
the fourth lane on the westbound side, and there was
a cabby coming down the road. We were right by
the New Orleans Airport and the cabby hit this guy,
and this guy, the pimp, came through the windshield, decapitated
(31:29):
him and the rest of the trunk of his body
was embedded into the windshield and the decapitated head was
in the back seat. There was not a fair in
the car. The guy was going to the airport. And
I'll never forget this guy. The guy could barely speak English,
and he was saturated in blood because when he hit
(31:52):
that guy, immediately it took the guy's head off. So
he's got arterial spray that's just going, you know, all
over him, saturated and I felt really sorry for this
guy who's on the side of the road that had
a blanket around. The e mts were out there, and
you know, the young lady, I'm happy to say, was
(32:12):
not harmed. She had an angel on her shoulder that night,
because you know, she very well could have been. But
you know, you see.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
These imagine this guy going back home explaining why he
left the United States and went back home.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Yeah, he's explaining what precisely. It's like, this is just
two nuts for me.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
You know, what are the odds that that that sort
of thing has happened? But you know that's that's why
it's so jaw dropping. Many times you get you get this, uh,
these vehicles that are traveling in a high rate of
speed and they can cause all kinds of odd things,
you know, to happen on that same stretch of road.
I actually had a mother and daughter at Christmas time
(32:53):
that we're going down I ten to go shop for Christmas.
And the rear the left rear wheel off of an
eighteen wheeler that was headed eastbound came off. And I'm
not talking about a tire, I'm talking about the entire wheel,
the housing with the tire on it bounced for probably
(33:16):
I don't know, probably about two hundred yards down the road,
hopped the median, the center divide wall, and the mom
and daughter that were going to go Christmas shopping they
caved in the roof of their car and killed them
both instantaneously. You never know, you yeah, you never know
what you're you know what you're going to encounter out there,
(33:38):
but you know, there's there's a there's a piece of
me that begins to think about this. It's one thing
to have, you know, like the cabby you know that's
got the pimp that's, you know, trying to chase down
this young woman, the tire that comes loose. Those things
are almost explainable. On one level, they're shocking, but they're
(34:01):
almost explainable. What's inexplicable is when one fellow human being
decimates another and ends their life and doesn't even have
the soul to stop and render aid. They've correct me
(34:35):
if I'm wrong, But is there or is there not
a case? I could have sworn that I have had
something to do with this case, but it kind of
predates me as to when I was doing news appearances.
This case about this woman that drove all the way
home with a guide lodged in her Yeah, wasn't that
from like two thousand and one. I think they've been
(34:57):
based like a movie on this thing. They've done multiple
crom story, you know, true crom episodes about it.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
You know, we told you guys, like with Nancy Grace
doing her show, where there will be similar transaction stories
meaning stories we've also covered in the past that are
similar by the person.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Is that an industry term?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
No, it's a made up term. I don't even know
how you spell it.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, but okay, let me ask you about an industry
term as we move forward, because I really need to
know this.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I was looking this up and I thought this is
something made up by some jerk like me, because it
actually lists and this investigation of Kirsten Strang being hit
by a car as fatal vehicle versus bicycle crash. Do
(35:46):
they list it really like that? Yes, versus bicycle? Why
is that that sounds horrible?
Speaker 1 (35:52):
No? No, no, yeah it does. But that's and I'll
give you another one if you like that one they'll
say motor vehicle versus pedestrian to and it will be
written like that.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, I know, that's what I'm looking at the official
I'm looking at Penela's County Sheriff's office, and that's what
they're I thought, I've seen that.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
And that's actually listed. Yeah, no, no, no, and that's
actually listed on death certificates like that too. It'll say
pedestrian versus vehicle or vehicle versus bicycle. You'll you'll have that.
And the beauty of it is it's it's very concise
and to the point. I mean, you understand immediately what
(36:28):
you're dealing with. You're talking about a couple of you know,
maybe a ton and a half of steel, motorized steel
that's going head to head with either or you know,
not head head to rear with a bicycle. Or maybe
you've got an individual that's crossing the road and they
get hammered. You know. The thing about it is being
(36:50):
impacted by a motor vehicle. It's yeah, I mean, obviously
the injuries are really over the top. You're going to
see things that you can only imagine, you worse, nightmares,
crushing type injuries. But here's the thing about it is
is that you can have someone that is involved in
a motor vehicle day motor vehicle accident and they might
(37:14):
be just fine, but they've got these little multiple bleeds
that are going on through their body. One of the
first things I'm thinking about is probably a closed head injury.
You'll see there are cases out there where individuals will
be struck and they're talking, Okay, they're lucid, they know
(37:35):
day and time, they're we're into the dayton time and
all that sort of thing, and then a few minutes
later they stand up and next thing you know, they're
down like sacked potatoes. It also happens with a order
to you know, the major vessel that runs the you know,
from your heart, you know, and splits off into your
femal arties. That is the biggest vessel in your body.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
You can get a rupture in that as a result
of a rama impact and suddenly suddenly it increases in
size and you begin to leak blood inside and you'll die.
You can't begin to imagine it. And I got to
tell you there's there's something that that's resonating with me
right now is we're we're talking about MVAS and in
(38:18):
this case out of Saint Pete. You know, there's a
certain level of callousness that comes along with this and
that that goes to my earlier statement about you know,
feeling like you're you know, you're other than human. You
know you're you're above it, you know you have power,
you know you're in a vehicle. I'm thinking about the
(38:39):
case out of New Orleans that we covered. I guess
it's back in twenty I know it was twenty twenty two,
Loma Fricky. Yeah, this poor woman, seventy seventy's the.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Worst we've done. That is, Yeah, that is the worst year.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah. And I was, you know, and I literally this
happened in one of my old neighborhoods that living in
mid city mid city New Orleans. I actually lived there
when I first moved back to New Orleans as an
adult and was living there and working and going to
school and whatnot. And this poor woman had come in
from an area called Wagonman, which is on the other
(39:17):
side of the river. She did not live in the area,
came in there, and she gets carjacked by four four
teenagers and she is hung in the car dave by
her safety belt. If I'm not mistaken, it was, And
they carjack her car and proceed to drive and talk
(39:41):
about callousness just let this sink in just for a second.
They planned this, They were looking for a mark at
this point in time, they drive away. They they're dragging
her down the road. They use so much force with
Miss Frickey's remains, or that car exerted so much force
(40:02):
over her remains it ripped her arm off and she
bled to death in the middle of the road. It's
and you know, I don't know that there were drugs
involved in that. I think that you've got individual I mean,
there could have been, but you know, and I don't
know that we will ever know. But the horror that
you encounter with motor vehicles and the things that you
(40:22):
see out on the street compare, I would say arguably
to any type of homicide that maybe you have born witness.
To the extent of carnage and damage is unbelievable. The
number of people that can be harmed. You know, I've
(40:46):
stood over the bodies of entire families that are dead
in a single motor vehicle accident, not a single they
were struck by another vehicle, and everyone, including an entire
family of five, were killed in a vehicle. And you
sit there and are rolling coffin. Many times you never
know what's rolling on the streets out there. You never
(41:07):
know who's out there. And the one thing that you
certainly don't know if something ever happened to you with
the person that bore witness to it, or maybe the
person that caused the accident, do they have a heart
or do they treat you just like you're an animal
that's flown through their windshield. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(41:31):
this is Bodybacks.
Body Bats with Joseph Scott More. One of the toughest
things I had to learn when I was growing up
was how to drive. And let me tell you why
it was hard for me. I was not allowed to
drive an automatic transmission car. I had to drive a
manual transmission. And I had one individual who was my
(00:26):
stepfather that was attempting to teach me, and anytime I
screwed up, that was met with the back of his hand,
and he was constantly frustrated by the idea that I
couldn't get the hang of the clutch. And to make
matters worse, I had saved my money and actually bought
(00:47):
a nineteen sixty eight Mustang and he had three speed transmissions.
I had to learn how to drive this thing. Who
doesn't want one in nineteen sixty eight Mustang with a
three speed transmission. So it was a very frustrating time
for me. But you know, I had a friend of
mine that I grew up with, and he's a friend
(01:08):
of the family. He said, let me take him out.
I'll have him driving, you know, within just a couple hours,
And sure enough, we went out to this huge church
that had a massive parking lot and we just we
had that thing. It looked like it was in a rodeo.
It's like a horse just bucking back and forth. But
sooner or later I got the hang of it. That's
the thing about driving a manual transmission. It becomes secondary
(01:31):
after a while, but you know there's a lot going
on there. You really have to be focused, you know,
anticipating hills and anticipating people that are maybe in front
of you. You have to gear down. It's not like
an automatic transmission. It's going to kind of slow you
down a little bit. How much more so do you think, though,
when you're driving down the road and you have not
(01:56):
only your life that you're looking out for to protect,
but let's face it, you're trying to protect the lives
of others that are in your path. All it takes
is to take your eyes off the road, or all
it takes is for an individual take one more head
(02:16):
of coke or one more sip of alcohol, and people's
lives are ruined forever and ever. Today, owned bodybacks, we're
going to talk about one such case that has recently
hit the news, and I got to tell you it
s as depraved as just about anything out there that
(02:38):
we cover. Coming to you from the beautiful campus of
Jacksonville State University. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Bodybacks Dave mac We had this case come across our
desk collectively. It's been in the news and it was
(03:02):
a reminder I think of other cases that are not
too dissimilar where an automobile has been a guess essentially
turned into a weapon and weaponized. Now, whether or not
it was intentionally turned into a weapon, I can tell
you it was lethal machinery, if you'll put it that way, Yeah,
(03:27):
it was a lethal weapon, Joe.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
When I was a kid and we had I lived
in a state where two things One, if you wanted
to be driving at sixteen, you had to take Driver's
ed and we also used high school students as school
bus drivers. You could take the school bus driving class
and learn to be a school bus driver with your
(03:48):
learners permit, which is what I did. I actually learned, really,
I learned to drive stick shift on a school bus
manual transmission with no power steering. After learning to drive
stick on a school bus, believe me, driving a three
speed anything is pretty much a piece of cake. But
in this particular case, here friends this case hit us
hard because, first ofly, you got a thirty eight year
(04:10):
old mom who is on her e bike ten o'clock
at night, Saint Petersburg, Florida, when Xavier Digby, twenty two
years old, comes flaming down the street drunk and hits
her from behind.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
He hit the back. She was in a bike lane.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
You know, there are communities all over around the world,
all around our country in particular, where they have a
bike lane. It's just for e bikes and bicycles and
cars don't drive in that lane.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
It's just for bikes.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
She was in the bike lane when this young man
came behind her and hit her on the back.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Tire hit her so hard, Joe.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
She came flying through the windshield, flying through the wind,
her body dense the hood of the car and bam,
she is wedged in the windshield.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Now, Joe, for most of us, hitting something is going
to make you slam on the brakes. Oh my gosh,
what just happened. Xavier Digby didn't stop. Thirty eight year
old Kirsten Stang is in his windshield. He keeps driving.
He keeps driving for eight blocks. Joe, she fell out
(05:27):
of the car, out of the windshield something. He hit
a bump pahole. It jarred her loose and her body
fell to the roadway. He didn't stop to check on her.
He kept driving. It was other citizens who were horrified
by what they were seeing, and when they saw the
poor woman's body fall off the car, they stopped and
called police. Now it was quite the spectacle seeing him
(05:48):
driving down the road. People saw it. They're calling for
help and so helped it arrive. But Kirsten Strang did
not survive. This guy kept driving, Joe. They did locate
him about a mile away. He was it a liquor store.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Wow, what a shock.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It was closed, but he was sitting in the parking lot,
either waiting for them to open or trying to figure
out how to get in. That's the story we're talking
about today.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, it's amazing to me. How And I don't know
why I would even say amazing or why would be shocked.
I think I'd like to have people believe that that
I still have that bit of humanity within me. But Dave,
I got to tell you, brother, the longer we go,
the it's it's spinning down the drain. You know, you
(06:42):
think about these cases and Listen. This is not the
first time that we have had a case over the
years where something like this happens. I'm reminded actually of
the two young men that I don't know if you
were called. Do you remember this case where the two
young men ran down a call them men losing using
(07:03):
that term loosely. They ran down the guy who's a
retired police officer on his bicycle and ran him over
and killed him. And they did it for their own
personal entertainment. Yeah. That that that is true weaponization of
a car, you know, of an automobile, and you know,
you have things like this that happened. You know, I
(07:23):
think that automobiles in particular, they can make people, even
even the uh maybe the most fainthearted among us, seem
very brave. You know, when you get behind some beast
out there driving down the road and you're traveling sixty
sixty five miles per hour and you feel completely protected,
(07:47):
maybe you fly off the handle. Maybe you think you're
gonna be safe in there. If you're you know, if
you're a quote unquote pulling a cork, you know before
you mount up in your car, maybe you're doing it
while you're going down the road, whatever the case might be,
but it changes people in that environment and even you know,
and this is not I don't know that we can
(08:07):
necessarily say that this is a case of road rage
per se, but just think about how many times and
I look, I'm chief among centers. I'll sit here and
I will tell you I gotta go ask forgiveness because
I have let it fly, you know, going down the
road when somebody is you know, cuts me off or
(08:31):
to end the story is as old as time. But
you know, you're embolden when you're inside of a vehicle
like this, and it's an amazing dynamic. I think, whereas
if you were just going down the road and maybe
you're jogging down the road, or maybe you're riding your
bike down the road and you're in the same lane
with her, even if you're drunk, or are you going
(08:53):
to try to drive your shoulder into her, you know,
into this poor woman and kill her. Are you going
to try to bumper off the road with your bicycle?
Probably not. I think it's just the idea of being
in a vehicle. We're completely encapsulated in the steel and
glass bubble and you feel like you can do anything
you want. And you're not gonna actually, no harm is
going to come to you. But this poor woman who's
(09:15):
a single mother's life is completely snuffed out.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So many you know what, it's not just her, it's
her son and her mother because now her son will
be taken care of by grandma. And you know the
dynamic that just changed because somebody got behind the wheel
drunk and drove. But Joe, when I saw this story,
I might I was thinking about you because I wonder
do police call when you have an accident? This isn't
(09:40):
an accident. This is this is going to be a
body in the street that has been hit by a car.
And the story you're gonna get is going to be
peeled together by it because it's eight blocks long before
she fell off the car.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Joe, So you've got the bike back at impact.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I'm gonna I'm going to assume now as the investigator,
you're going to to be called. I would hope called
to the scene when god forbid, they knew she was dead.
When you know she died on the scene, she wasn't.
She didn't die at the hospital. Do they call you then?
Do they call an investigator?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Right now? We have a dead body in the street.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, okay, yeah, And.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
What are you going to do?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Though, Well, it's a weird thing. You know, we hadn't
really talked about this much on you know, we're we're
heading toward five hundred episodes now, and I know that
we've had cases involving automobiles, but I don't know that
I really kind of peel back the uh, the skin
on this thing relative to what we do, you know,
in the medical examiner corner world when it comes to
(10:36):
motor vehicle accidents. But we spend you know, I probably
spend as much time on car accident scenes as I
did at homicide scenes over the years.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And would this be considered a homicide?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
That's an interesting question. I'm glad you brought it up.
And here's why. This is one of those cases where
you will have a medical examiner, which in Florida, of course,
we're talking about Saint Pete in Florida, where they don't
have corners, so they have medical examiners. They have the
states actually broken into districts kind of like the way
(11:10):
it's set up, tell the truth, and then you have
the police that are two separate investigations here. So the
goal of the medical examiner is to rule this as
a whatever manner it's going to be. You know, the
cause of death is going to be pretty pretty obvious.
It's going to be massive blunt force trauma. I can
(11:31):
tell you that without having the autopsy report in front
of me, she's going to probably sustain massive head trauma.
She might even have what's called a flail chest if
she was impacted on a bike, which means her ribs
are literally going to be floating where bilally fractured, may
be punctured long dependent upon where the point of impact is.
If she's seated like this on a bike, maybe pelvic fractures,
(11:56):
spinal fractures, you know this source, and not to mention
the blunt trauma to her internal organs. Many times, what
you'll see I've seen, let's see, I've seen lacerated kidneys,
spleens and particular spleens are very fragile, you bleed out
from them. But probably the biggest one is going to
be the liver. And you know, with that kind of impact,
(12:18):
but you go out to the scene and you're still
going to work this as a crime scene. Here's the rub,
you know, for a medical examiner to rule a motor
vehicle event as a homicide. You're going to have to
prove to that attending pathologists forensic pathologist, that there is
(12:42):
intent okay, because they might rule this and I would
say probably a significant percentage of medical examiners out there
that would do this autopsy you are going to rule
this as an accident day. They're not going to rule
this as a homicide. Whereas with the authorities with the
police department. You know, with canon of law, depending upon
(13:02):
what states you're in, you can have vehicular homicide, you
can have negligent I mean, there's all there's this litany
of various degrees or charges that you can hook an
individual up on. So we're going to conduct a death investigation.
When we arrive out there, we'll be working with the
accent investigators, who, by the way, if you've never been
(13:25):
in the company of a true accident investigator, they are
the unsung heroes in forensics. Just the mathematics alone to
be certified. I was down at the State Police Academy
in Georgia many years ago taking classes. You know that
I would periodically and I would see these poor guys
(13:47):
would that we're going through the accent investigation and it
was a multi stage course that you had to go through,
and you had to have a baseline understanding of physics
in order to make it through it. And these guys
would be sweating this class. I mean, it really really difficult.
But they are brilliant. And if you find one that's
good at what they do, they're amazing. They can they
(14:10):
can tell you so much about the dynamics of vehicle
on vehicle, vehicle on person. They can even factory in
weather conditions, road surface conditions. Amazing, amazing investigators. And I
always enjoyed work because you know, it's like when you're
around really bright people, you kind of some of it
(14:33):
might slough off on you. You might be privileged enough
just to have a bit of their knowledge drip down
onto you. And I would learn something every time I
was out with them. But you know, their investigation is
going to be trying to decide whether or not they're
going to charge this person that did this. Our investigation
is going to surround you know, obviously the cause of death,
(14:53):
which you know is going to be pretty obvious, but
then you get into this kind of ticklish area where
you're trying to site are you going to call this
a homicide? Are you going to call this an accident?
And I think that you know, the classic definition of
homicide is that it's generally defined as death at the
hand of another. It makes sense, right, you know, it's
(15:16):
a homicide. You're not judging anybody. You know, it's death
at the hand of another. It's pretty simplistic. It's very clinical,
you know when you hear it. But for some reason
there are a lot of medical examiners out there that
will rule these cases as accidental deaths. They're going to
want to have like many times they'll they'll won't I've
heard them use the term specific intent. They're they're going
to want to say, Okay, did this person actually weaponize
(15:39):
this vehicle and say I'm going to go out with
the intention of running this person over and killing them.
And so that's that's kind of the hill you have
to climb with with with pathologists in this in this
in this dynamic.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Between driving down the road and a guy cuts you off.
You're riding a bike and you go into a sub
the rate that has the water drain, and you go
over the handlebars and you master your melon and he
keeps on trucking. You know, that's an accident. He doesn't
even know you fell, you know, it just happens. That's
an accident. This is a guy who got behind the
wheel of the car drunk, knew he was drunk when
he got behind it. Because by the way Xavier, the
(16:18):
suspect in this case, I should say alleged, I guess
he was charged with Adrian Rigby allegedly got behind the
wheel drunk, and Rigby was allegedly more than twice drunk.
And Xavier Rigby had already done this before and pled
it out of a dui. Xavier Rigby is such a
risk to humanity on the road that the judge actually
(16:40):
sat him with a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars bond.
But I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, Joe, she's
in the bike lane. It's ten o'clock at night, and
he has to be out of his lane and into
the bike lane. But then he has to hit her
with such force. Now I'm not a mathematician, but I
have on a k tried to be a test crash dummy.
(17:02):
A crash test dummy, what are you gonna call him?
But I'm thinking, all right, he's driving and he hits
the back tire of her bike, and he moves that
bike with such force that she lets go. Okay, her
hands are off the wheel and her body then the
bike gets pushed out of the way and her body
now is in the windshield. Right, That's what happened and
(17:28):
the impact of that. For most of us, we would
know we hit something and we would stop. First thing,
go to the When you see a pine cone dropped
from a tree in the street, you hit the brakes.
You know, we see something, we see a cup in
the road, We hit the brakes because you don't even
know what else there could be.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
But this guy doesn't hit the brakes. He hits the
gas and he doesn't.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Just yeah, and so you're transferring. You're transferring, literally transferring
that energy from the vehicle to the back of that bike,
because he would have made contact with the rear of
that bike first, you know, as as stated, and you're
right about the dynamic of this thing, potentially because the bike.
You know, you've got two separate, two separate entities here,
(18:15):
all right. You've got the bicycle and you've got her.
They're both traveling through space together. They're traveling at a
known speed. All right. The vehicle though, is creating its
own energy as it's going down the road, and that
energy is going to be transferred into the rear tire
of that bike. Now, the inertia of this thing and
(18:37):
the dynamic of it, and it's it's really kind of
interesting because she's riding on a bicycle, the tire, the
rear tire is making contact with the road. That's now prohibitive. Okay,
so what happens. Let me just ask you this. This
is a question that just about any well in our
(18:59):
generation ten year old boy could answer. What happens if
you were to throw on the brakes of your bike
and lift the handlebars up at the same time, Well,
you're going to go backwards. You're stopping at that point
in time, and you're almost like popping a will at wheelie. Right.
But the problem is is that now this car is
moving forward, it's got the tire, it's captured, and it's
(19:22):
the cars continuing forward. The tire is being mashed, and
so she's going to travel backwards at this point in time,
you know, kind of literally kind of catapulting her backwards.
And the idea that she impacted this windshield, Dave is
arguably one of the most gruesome things that you can
even think about. But hey, you know what, her death.
(19:47):
I hope, I hope against hope that was sudden. But
you know, there's always that outside chance that if you
saw it happen, if you were the cause of it,
you have at least some semblance of humanity within your
soul to want to stop and render aid instead of
(20:09):
trucking on down to the local package store. I got
to tell you this, Other than fire scenes, no no, no, no, no.
(20:33):
I never felt really safe at fire scenes. But I
have to say, Dave, motor vehicle accidents. I'm you know,
I'm talking about me personally right now. Motor vehicle accidents.
I was always terrified on them. I've actually seen investigators
get hit brushed particularly, I've seen firefighters get brushed by cars.
(20:59):
And you have to consider where I finish my career
up Atlanta, which is a nightmare in a traffic environment.
I've been on too eighty five, which is the big
ring refur to.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Judge called to eighty five the Georgia Audubon.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, yeah, years ago, you know, And it's weird. Either
you'll see one or two things happen out there. Either
people will be going so fast that they just kind
of melt into the background and you like you see
them rush by, or it's a parking lot, and sometimes
that can you know, you can be stuck in a
parking lot in ON two on I two eighty five
(21:35):
in Atlanta at one o'clock in the morning. You know,
that's that's the way it is because the volume of traffic,
that's the only thing. It's not necessarily because the population
of Atlanta. It's it's the confluence of I twenty, I
seventy five, and I eighty five, all of the all
of those highways there's Interstate. They intersect in Atlanta, I
(21:58):
mean literally crisscross each other. So you got three major
vessels in that city, and it made there were a
lot of motor vehicle access. I went out on and worked,
but there was I would have to say that I
was more afraid from my personal safety on highways than
any other time, because you know, you're trying to focus
(22:19):
on what's before you relative and you're taking a look
at things like the skid marks that are left behind
on the road as somebody's supplying the brakes. You're looking
for a broken glass you're looking, you're looking for bits
of the body, which happened quite a bit. I've had
cases where people hit so hard that you'll have multiple
traumatic amputations, you know, out of the scene. And don't
(22:43):
even started on train accidents because those are really really brutal.
But we're talking about autos here. But there was always
that thing in the back of my mind where I
felt like somebody's going to slide into us and hit
us because people don't pay attention, you know. And the
other thing is they're drawn to the lights, right they're
nosing nellies, you know, lots of times if you get one,
(23:04):
and if you get one person that's not a nosy
nelly and they're on their phone or whatever they're doing,
and they're so distracted, you wind up with multiple people
injured or even somebody else killed. It's a very dangerous
environment to get in. That's why like accident investigators cops
in general, particularly traffic traffic officers, a tip of the
(23:25):
cap to them, man, because I got to tell you,
it is a dangerous job. I mean, it's very dangerous
being out there working motor vehicle accidents. You know. I've
had police officer friends that have been hit that we're
directing traffic. Again, that's a police people don't think about
that as a very dangerous, dangerous side job. If it's
(23:46):
a side job, it's a very dangerous job if you've
been assigned to it. You know, motor cops guys on motorcycles. Again,
it looks really cool. You're thinking that you're you know
that you're Eric, Eric is straw to you know your chips,
you know, and yeah, yeah, Willcox and you know you're
(24:08):
you're out there. It looks really cool, but it's it's
a very dangerous occupation. So you know, you you think
about that environment and not just that, but it's being
displayed before you. Your humanity picks up on this because
you're you're thinking to yourself, Okay, I'm out here, and
this person has painted the roadway with their blood okay,
(24:30):
or their organs. This happens a lot, and you're thinking,
my lord, this could happen to me out here, And
I know that sounds weird. You know, you would think
that you'd be very fearful out on like a homicide
where there's been major gun play or something like that.
Most of the time, so I've been shot at before
most of the time when you're out there, the parties
(24:53):
have dispersed. At that point in time, cars cars don't disperse.
World keeps on turning, and so we you know, I
think that probably probably as far as traumatic events in America,
I'm almost positive this as a matter of fact, I
know I am. As far as trauma related deaths, motor
(25:15):
vehicle accents outpace everything else. You know, firearms, knives, bludgeons,
you know, anything like that. You know, Joe, motor vehicle
actions kill more people.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, And oftentimes when I think about a car accident,
I don't I don't go immediately to the fatality because
that's not been my role in life. It's been people
have a vendor bender, you call insurance and move on.
But your life, when it comes to a wreck, it's
you're right, I remember you know you were talking about
the those who are the first ones on the scene.
You know, those first responders. You're the last responder and
(25:49):
by the time you're out there to try to figure
out what happened. That's why the traffic is moving again,
because you know, when they're in the midst of cleaning
it up, it's pretty much out of standstill, creeping along.
But once it's moved off to the side, people are
now trying to make up for lost time. It didn't
occur to me how scary they would be. Have you
ever changed a tire? Everyone changing a tire on the
interstate when people are driving eighty plus miles an hour
(26:10):
by and you're eight feet away trying to change a
tire's That was when I when I had to do that,
I went, oh, my gosh, Now I know why this
is so dangerous. You don't think about it when you're driving,
but now I'm thinking, you're out there, You're trying to
figure out what happened. It's going to be probably at night,
everybody's flying down the road trying to make up for
lost time because they sat in traffic for the last
(26:30):
hour and a half. Holy moly, what is I I
kind of promise you I'd never ask worst case scenario
or worst thing you've ever seen when it comes to
an automobile thing.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Joe, do you have you have a list of worst Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yeah, I got yeah, there's crazy, it's yeah, it's you
see so much stuff because you know, in the medical
legal world relative to motor vehicles, because first off, the
dynamic you're talking about a hot speed event many times,
and it could take all forms. I've had homicides committed
with motor vehicles. I've had suicides committed with motor vehicles,
(27:05):
people driving into fixed objects. That doesn't matter of fact
how time is dependent though, Uh, well, you have to
go back and go into you know, what was their intent,
you know, any suicidal ideation, vocalization where they end their
psychiatric care, where they depressed and all this stuff. Yeah,
and then you know you have people that, you know,
(27:26):
just the really tough ones to prove are people that
have pre existing medical conditions that maybe they have a
heart attack or a diabetic event and they run off
the road and to kill somebody else. That does happen,
you know, I've had I know of one case in
Atlanta that was actually on two a five where a
guy was passed out at the wheel and he was
(27:49):
driving I guess it was like forty to forty five
miles per hour and leaned over in the seat and
wound up and people had seen him go for miles
like this. The car is stayed on the road. My
guy finally ran off and hit hit a bridge abutment.
He was dead. And the question is was he dead
when he hit the bridge or was he did the
impact killed him because he had trauma. But yeah, so
(28:12):
you know, I think about what we refer to, you know,
with with this poor woman down and Saint Pete. This
is what you call a cabin intrusion is and it's
just a fancy way of saying that, you know, something
entered the cabin of the car. Now that can be
you know, an object that you know, like one of
(28:35):
these idiots that takes rocks and throws them off of bridges,
cinder blocks, all of these kids that do it and
then sit back and laugh after they've done it. You
can you can have animals. I've had friends of mine
that have I've never have, but I've had friends of
mine that have work cases where you have you have
(28:58):
animals that will come through windshields deer. There was a
gray old picture we had in our in our collection
of black and white down in New Orleans, where lady
had hit and this was back in the fifties. I'll
never forget it. The image just stayed with me. Hit
a mule and the mule came through the windshield and
(29:18):
killed her. And that that does happen. People think that
it doesn't, and then you have people that come through
windshields and that's that's cabin intrusion. Probably. I think one
of the most bizarre cases, Dave was actually a case
that I worked in New Orleans that involved domestic violence
(29:39):
of all things. You had a guy who had worked
as a pimp and he had a huge, like late
seventies and Lincoln town car, the kind that had the
retractable lights or the lights kind of lift up on
the front, and it was all pimped out. I mean
it was you know, it was a really nice car,
(30:01):
you know, if that's your sort of thing. He had
this young lady in the car with him that was
his quote unquote girlfriend that he had been knocking around,
and of course she was more than a girlfriend, she
was a meal ticket and he had several of these women.
But anyway, he got into a fight going down to
I Ten with her, reached over and gave her a
(30:21):
right cross while he's going down the road and hit
her in the jaw. She grabbed the steering wheel at
the same time and pulled the car over into the
side of the road and bailed. Well, he was shocked
that she did this. She literally goes out of the
car and runs and at this point in ten I
(30:43):
ten is like, let me get this straight. It's either
eight or ten lanes across, and it's people are cooking
on this thing. And she makes it across all of
the westbound lanes and gets to the divider, jumps over
the divider, and makes it across the other lanes heading east.
(31:04):
This rocket scientist gets out of the car, goes around it.
He makes it to the fourth I think it was
the fourth lane on the westbound side, and there was
a cabby coming down the road. We were right by
the New Orleans Airport and the cabby hit this guy,
and this guy, the pimp, came through the windshield, decapitated
(31:29):
him and the rest of the trunk of his body
was embedded into the windshield and the decapitated head was
in the back seat. There was not a fair in
the car. The guy was going to the airport. And
I'll never forget this guy. The guy could barely speak English,
and he was saturated in blood because when he hit
(31:52):
that guy, immediately it took the guy's head off. So
he's got arterial spray that's just going, you know, all
over him, saturated and I felt really sorry for this
guy who's on the side of the road that had
a blanket around. The e mts were out there, and
you know, the young lady, I'm happy to say, was
(32:12):
not harmed. She had an angel on her shoulder that night,
because you know, she very well could have been. But
you know, you see.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
These imagine this guy going back home explaining why he
left the United States and went back home.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Yeah, he's explaining what precisely. It's like, this is just
two nuts for me.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
You know, what are the odds that that that sort
of thing has happened? But you know that's that's why
it's so jaw dropping. Many times you get you get this, uh,
these vehicles that are traveling in a high rate of
speed and they can cause all kinds of odd things,
you know, to happen on that same stretch of road.
I actually had a mother and daughter at Christmas time
(32:53):
that we're going down I ten to go shop for Christmas.
And the rear the left rear wheel off of an
eighteen wheeler that was headed eastbound came off. And I'm
not talking about a tire, I'm talking about the entire wheel,
the housing with the tire on it bounced for probably
(33:16):
I don't know, probably about two hundred yards down the road,
hopped the median, the center divide wall, and the mom
and daughter that were going to go Christmas shopping they
caved in the roof of their car and killed them
both instantaneously. You never know, you yeah, you never know
what you're you know what you're going to encounter out there,
(33:38):
but you know, there's there's a there's a piece of
me that begins to think about this. It's one thing
to have, you know, like the cabby you know that's
got the pimp that's, you know, trying to chase down
this young woman, the tire that comes loose. Those things
are almost explainable. On one level, they're shocking, but they're
(34:01):
almost explainable. What's inexplicable is when one fellow human being
decimates another and ends their life and doesn't even have
the soul to stop and render aid. They've correct me
(34:35):
if I'm wrong, But is there or is there not
a case? I could have sworn that I have had
something to do with this case, but it kind of
predates me as to when I was doing news appearances.
This case about this woman that drove all the way
home with a guide lodged in her Yeah, wasn't that
from like two thousand and one. I think they've been
(34:57):
based like a movie on this thing. They've done multiple
crom story, you know, true crom episodes about it.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
You know, we told you guys, like with Nancy Grace
doing her show, where there will be similar transaction stories
meaning stories we've also covered in the past that are
similar by the person.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Is that an industry term?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
No, it's a made up term. I don't even know
how you spell it.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, but okay, let me ask you about an industry
term as we move forward, because I really need to
know this.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I was looking this up and I thought this is
something made up by some jerk like me, because it
actually lists and this investigation of Kirsten Strang being hit
by a car as fatal vehicle versus bicycle crash. Do
(35:46):
they list it really like that? Yes, versus bicycle? Why
is that that sounds horrible?
Speaker 1 (35:52):
No? No, no, yeah it does. But that's and I'll
give you another one if you like that one they'll
say motor vehicle versus pedestrian to and it will be
written like that.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, I know, that's what I'm looking at the official
I'm looking at Penela's County Sheriff's office, and that's what
they're I thought, I've seen that.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
And that's actually listed. Yeah, no, no, no, and that's
actually listed on death certificates like that too. It'll say
pedestrian versus vehicle or vehicle versus bicycle. You'll you'll have that.
And the beauty of it is it's it's very concise
and to the point. I mean, you understand immediately what
(36:28):
you're dealing with. You're talking about a couple of you know,
maybe a ton and a half of steel, motorized steel
that's going head to head with either or you know,
not head head to rear with a bicycle. Or maybe
you've got an individual that's crossing the road and they
get hammered. You know. The thing about it is being
(36:50):
impacted by a motor vehicle. It's yeah, I mean, obviously
the injuries are really over the top. You're going to
see things that you can only imagine, you worse, nightmares,
crushing type injuries. But here's the thing about it is
is that you can have someone that is involved in
a motor vehicle day motor vehicle accident and they might
(37:14):
be just fine, but they've got these little multiple bleeds
that are going on through their body. One of the
first things I'm thinking about is probably a closed head injury.
You'll see there are cases out there where individuals will
be struck and they're talking, Okay, they're lucid, they know
(37:35):
day and time, they're we're into the dayton time and
all that sort of thing, and then a few minutes
later they stand up and next thing you know, they're
down like sacked potatoes. It also happens with a order
to you know, the major vessel that runs the you know,
from your heart, you know, and splits off into your
femal arties. That is the biggest vessel in your body.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
You know.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
You can get a rupture in that as a result
of a rama impact and suddenly suddenly it increases in
size and you begin to leak blood inside and you'll die.
You can't begin to imagine it. And I got to
tell you there's there's something that that's resonating with me
right now is we're we're talking about MVAS and in
(38:18):
this case out of Saint Pete. You know, there's a
certain level of callousness that comes along with this and
that that goes to my earlier statement about you know,
feeling like you're you know, you're other than human. You
know you're you're above it, you know you have power,
you know you're in a vehicle. I'm thinking about the
(38:39):
case out of New Orleans that we covered. I guess
it's back in twenty I know it was twenty twenty two,
Loma Fricky. Yeah, this poor woman, seventy seventy's the.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Worst we've done. That is, Yeah, that is the worst year.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah. And I was, you know, and I literally this
happened in one of my old neighborhoods that living in
mid city mid city New Orleans. I actually lived there
when I first moved back to New Orleans as an
adult and was living there and working and going to
school and whatnot. And this poor woman had come in
from an area called Wagonman, which is on the other
(39:17):
side of the river. She did not live in the area,
came in there, and she gets carjacked by four four
teenagers and she is hung in the car dave by
her safety belt. If I'm not mistaken, it was, And
they carjack her car and proceed to drive and talk
(39:41):
about callousness just let this sink in just for a second.
They planned this, They were looking for a mark at
this point in time, they drive away. They they're dragging
her down the road. They use so much force with
Miss Frickey's remains, or that car exerted so much force
(40:02):
over her remains it ripped her arm off and she
bled to death in the middle of the road. It's
and you know, I don't know that there were drugs
involved in that. I think that you've got individual I mean,
there could have been, but you know, and I don't
know that we will ever know. But the horror that
you encounter with motor vehicles and the things that you
(40:22):
see out on the street compare, I would say arguably
to any type of homicide that maybe you have born witness.
To the extent of carnage and damage is unbelievable. The
number of people that can be harmed. You know, I've
(40:46):
stood over the bodies of entire families that are dead
in a single motor vehicle accident, not a single they
were struck by another vehicle, and everyone, including an entire
family of five, were killed in a vehicle. And you
sit there and are rolling coffin. Many times you never
know what's rolling on the streets out there. You never
(41:07):
know who's out there. And the one thing that you
certainly don't know if something ever happened to you with
the person that bore witness to it, or maybe the
person that caused the accident, do they have a heart
or do they treat you just like you're an animal
that's flown through their windshield. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
(41:31):
this is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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