I have nightmares about going to a traffic accident and it’s my family there

I was called to another fatal on the Bruce highway late last year. You don’t know what you’re getting into when you get there. That morning, I had left my daughter. It was her 1st birthday. Half an hour later I was at a fatal traffic accident.

When you get there you don’t know what you're going into. As a police officer you have to see it all, but all you want to do is throw up. All you can think of is that this person was on his way to work and he didn’t make it. That soon another police officer will be going round to his house to say, ‘Your husband, your partner isn’t coming home,’ and you pray they left on good terms.

When I got home that night I had to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. And when my wife asks ‘How was your day?’, what can you say? 'I just saw a man who, the accident was that horrific, I don’t know how old he was?' How do you as a human being see that and then keep going? Function in a normal way? And it’s not just me. You’ve got the firies the accident investigation squad, we’ve got to hold up a plastic sheet so people going by don’t see what we see everyday.

People see a police officer and all they see is him giving tickets. They don’t see the other side of it. They don’t see the pain of it. I know what’s out there. I want to wrap my family in cotton wool. I have nightmares about going to a traffic accident and it’s my family there. I've met a lot of families, I’ve given death messages, I’ve borne the brunt of their frustration and you stand there and take it. How do you as a human being cope with that? I go numb. 

Lost too soon

It’s just me. Not me in a wheelchair.