Photo By Tech. Sgt. Kyle Johnson | Eric Smallridge woke up in the backseat of his sports utility vehicle, May 11, 2002....... read more read more
Subscribe
Smallridge woke up in the backseat of his truck, dazed and very confused. As he made his way out of the vehicle, he saw a police officer speeding up the other side of the bridge and another vehicle wrapped around a tree.
Assuming the other vehicle had been the cause of the incident, Smallridge began to tell the police as much. They responded by repeatedly asking him to recount the accident.
The officers were visibly upset, Smallridge said, and he couldn’t figure out why – until one said, “Don’t tell me you don’t know there’s two dead girls in that car over there.”
That’s when Smallridge’s perception of life shattered.
“I’d met someone I wanted to marry, and I was getting ready to graduate college – life was great,” said Eric Smallridge, whose dad had served as an Air Force Judge Advocate officer. “Four seconds later, I didn’t know what the meaning of life was supposed to be.”
*Regret*
The blinding white sands of Pensacola Beach, Florida, had long gone dark as Smallridge and his friend Mike jump-started Smallridge’s truck near the beach bar where he had been drinking with friends.
Concerned about Smallridge’s ability to drive, Mike, whose last name was withheld, made repeated efforts to keep Smallridge from driving that night. Eventually Smallridge’s persistence won out, and they let him drive home.
On the way home, Smallridge swerved to avoid another vehicle he thought was coming into his lane and collided with the car carrying Megan Napier and her friend Lisa Dickson.
Smallridge was going nearly double their speed when he hit their car, throwing his truck into a barrel roll and their car into the median, where it wrapped around a tree.
Both women’s necks were snapped instantly.
May 11, 2002, around 2:30 a.m., Napier and Dickson – both 20 – were pronounced dead at the scene.
*Mother’s Day*
One of the first things Renee Napier Lord saw May 12, 2002, was her somber sister-in-law knocking at the door.
“There’s been an accident,” she said. “It was Meagan. She didn’t make it.”
Lord immediately screamed “No! No! No!” in a wail that came straight from her lungs.
“It was this horrible, hideous sound that came out of me,” Lord said. “It was completely devastating, it felt like my heart had been ripped out – everything inside of me had been ripped out and obliterated. I felt very empty – immediately.”
Mother's Day, 2002. The Florida summer heat hammered down on a line of mourners that wrapped around the outside of the funeral home. For five and a half hours, Lord watched as people paid offered their respects to her daughter and their condolences to the grief-stricken mother – many soaked in sweat after waiting outside.
Lord was surprised to see five Marines in dress blues show up at the visitation. She didn’t know any Marines.
“My first thought was: Meagan’s been holding out on me! She was dating a Marine,” Lord remembers with a sad laugh. “So I asked them if they knew Meagan.”
“No ma’am, we were the second on the scene of the crash,” one said.
The funeral would be the next day at her church in Pensacola. The Marines showed up there again, this time wearing green service dress – each holding a single red rose for Lord.
Lord will never forget the flowers she received that day.
*Forgiveness*
The Frontier Theater on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was packed to bursting April 3, 15 years after the deadly accident. It was, without a doubt, the most attended event of the year so far – and it wasn’t because people wanted to complete their training for driving under the influence. The parking lot doesn’t fill to capacity an hour early for training.
What could possibly motivate a mother to befriend her daughter’s killer?
For Lord, the answer was simple: other people’s daughters.
Smallridge couldn’t shake his shame. As soon as he was able to do so after the trial, he wrote a letter to Lord.
“By God’s grace, she decided to read it,” Smallridge said. “I made sure to let her know I was not asking for mercy. I didn’t feel like I deserved mercy. I felt like I deserved whatever the judge was about to give me.
“I just wanted her to know all the way to the depths of my soul, I was sorry.”
Smallridge was given two 11-year prison sentences to be served consecutively – one for each woman he killed.
Lord opted to read the letter, and regular communication began. Through this, they developed into an unlikely team.
They decided to speak at Meagan’s high school. Wearing a blue jumpsuit and shackles around his hands and feet, Smallridge proved his letter was no facade.
Lord and Smallridge have now spoken all over the world, including 32 different military bases, sharing their tragedy in the hopes that others won’t make the same mistakes. Their story has touched many, and even inspired an A-list singer to write a song nominated for the 2013 Dove Awards.
Thanks to the determination of the victims’ families, Smallridge was released from prison in November, 2012 after serving his sentences together rather than separately. He has not stopped working with Lord in her efforts to stop intoxicated driving.
He’s grateful, Smallridge said. But those two girls aren’t coming back to life. The damage is done, and all he can do now is try to pull as much positivity out of it as possible.
On the day of his trial, the Florida courtroom was a tinderbox of emotion. The Napier, Dickson and Smallridge families had been waiting a year for closure and some idea of what the future held for them.
Smallridge sat in the front, his back to the families who would never see their daughters again as stifled sobs peppered the air.
Mike, the friend who helped jump-start his truck, took the stand.
“Mike, do you know this man?”
“That’s my friend, Eric Smallridge,” Mike responded curtly.
“Mike, did you happen to know Meagan and Lisa?”
Mike paused, head hung low under a burden nobody could see until he looked up with tears flooding his face.
“They were like my sisters.”
| Date Taken: | 04.24.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 04.24.2017 12:07 |
| Story ID: | 231321 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, AK, US |
| Web Views: | 166 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, Just Four Seconds, by TSgt Kyle Johnson, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT