Posted by Jim at October 21st, 2005

After picking up our kids from my mother in law, who had looked after them for a few hours, we drove up Division toward home. Division, for those of you who do not live in Grand Rapids, does not have a great reputation. Formerly the main highway/street through town (in the 50’s/60’s and earlier), it is now a street of used car lots, dirt, weeds and boarded up buildings. To be fair, there are growing spots of life, but it’s not a great street. Back in the 80’s-90’s, I’m told that it was the street for picking up prostitutes and buying drugs.

I’m sure it was a great street back in the 1890’s. Some of the boarded up buildings have classic architecture from the period.

Tonight though, it is a horrible street. We came through at about 10:15 pm, passing through a section where construction constricted traffic to two lanes from the normal four. As traffic got back to normal, we were passed by a group of three motorcycles traveling fairly quickly down the road.

I don’t know what precisely happened next (they’d managed to pass the cars just ahead of us), but suddenly we saw a shower of sparks and realized that a motorcyle lay on it’s side in the left lane. The car in front of us left our lane, passed around the motorcyle, and drove away. At that point, I came to a stop.

Just ahead of me in the right lane lay the motorcyclist, flat on his back and unmoving, his left hand pointed up at the sky.

My wife called 911. As she was talking to the operator, I realized that a girl lay face down on the sidewalk to the right of us, hands outstretched, blood on the sidewalk near her head. She did not move either. In the dark, she didn’t appear to be more than her early teens (UPDATE: see below).

A girl about the same age came around the corner and started screaming, followed by an older man and other kids. The older man pulled the screaming girl into his arms and led her away.

Even as Kristen hung up her phone and informed me that someone had already called about this, the fire trucks, police cars and ambulances began to arrive. Knowing that we had seen nothing that would help explain the accident and had done what we could, we drove away.

According to our local NBC affiliate, the girl is in the hospital with life threatening injuries. The man is in another hospital. His injuries are unknown.

UPDATE: The woman who got hit turns out to be 43 years old. She’s still fighting for her life. The motorcyclist appears to be in better shape. You can read (a little) more at TV 8’s website. I wonder who (if anyone) will be blamed for the accident? The motorcyclists seemed to be traveling pretty quickly, but trying to cross a dark street that’s filled with traffic isn’t a very good idea either.