Brian Culver crashes his sports car into a parked tractor-semitrailer

on March 10, 2011 at 12:15 PM, updated March 13, 2011 at 1:11 PM

7-5-2006-52.jpgComstock Township firefighters respond to the scene when Brian Culver crashed his car on April 7, 1994 near what is now called the Midlink Business Park.

COMSTOCK TOWNSHIP — Even though the crash was a mile away, it was loud enough that it sounded like an explosion and woke Dave Watson and his wife.

"Our dog barked and I looked at my wife, ‘What was that?'" said Watson, a Comstock Township firefighter.

Minutes later, around 1 a.m., his emergency pager went off: There was an accident on Cork Street near Sprinkle Road.

It was April 7, 1994.

Watson left the house and was the first emergency responder to reach the scene where an unconscious driver, Brian Culver, was trapped inside a crushed sports car.

The car had smashed into the back of a tractor-semitrailer parked on the shoulder of the road.

The semi-truck's shipment of steel was to be delivered in the morning to the nearby General Motors Corp. plant on Sprinkle.

Culver had dropped his friends off after a game of darts and a single beer at a local bar; he was headed to his parents' house, just down the street from Watson's home.

He never made it.

The semi had kicked up some gravel onto the road, and as Culver went around a sharp turn, he saw the trailer and tried to avoid it. His Dodge Stealth spun around, crashing into the truck, and Culver's neck snapped back into the headrest, severely bruising his spinal cord at the third and fourth vertebrae.

7-5-2006-48.jpgIt took firefighters 30 minutes to extricate Culver from his crashed car.

It took 30 minutes for Comstock firefighters to extricate Culver with the Jaws of Life. At one point, Culver stopped breathing.

Watson didn't realize who the driver was until he got into the car.

He fought back emotions — how he had watched Culver play high school football, how the two men had fought fires side by side — and focused on trying to save his friend's life.

Culver's father, who then was a Kalamazoo city firefighter and on duty, was called about the accident. He rushed home to pick up his wife and went to the scene.

Sandy Culver knew it was serious when she saw her son's arm fall limply off the gurney.

His injuries were so severe, his parents feared their son might not live.

"It felt like a bad dream," Sandy Culver said. "This wasn't real."