What Happens When You Accidentally Take Someone's Life?

knew me as the math teacher. That moment, with the smoke clearing and seeing my brother's body on the ground that I can still taste gunpowder, I flipped my car. My girlfriend died in the accident that I caused. Eight year old boy jarreted into the road and I hit him and he died before he reached the hospital. I had taken a child from his mother, caused them oceans

of grief. Can you imagine killing someone by mistake? If I could speak to the Baldwin family, I would say, we're here for the nitty grids, you know what I mean. We've all been deeply sad and horrified by the news Alec Baldwin shot and killed cinematographer Helena Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust. I am horrified for everybody that's involved to me and I work on the set a lot with guns and they're usually really fierce protocols. It was shocking. I didn't understand and I still don't

quite understand how that could happen. In Have you always felt safe and set? Always? Really always, because usually the prop master will come and show you the gun and they'll demonstrate not I always have them demonstrating look inside of the barrel. They'll put the blanks in while you're watching. So you got training on how to use the gun. I got training on how to use the gun and also training on what I should be looking for in order to handle a hot weapon on set. Right, do

you ever handle up a real gun? They're all real? Are there times when there are real bullets? No? No, there should see that's the thing that should never happen. Helena's tragic death should like on a shocking statistic, accidental killing happens over thirty thousand times a year. That's crazy. That's a lot. So meet John Arthur Green and Jennifer Eikenhorst who know all too well what Alec Baldwin must

be feeling like. Jennifer, a high school math teacher and Mama four had just picked up her daughter from volleyball and tragedy struck motorcycle Bokay, John, a musician who competed on American Idol, will be forever haunted by a fatal mistake that took the life of someone he loved the most in the world. John, let's start with you. So, Um, we grew up in North Carolina and you know, country family and worked the farm. And both my parents are

Southern Baptist ministers. And when I was eight years old, that was my parents wedding anniversary and they had left my brother and I home on that night. Um, we were playing cops and robbers, you know, as kids do. And um, and we always handled the guns. I mean the guns were always safe and never loaded, and we always were taught how to clean them and taught how to shoot, and also taught put him, put him away, picked up the gun and called him in the room.

And when I pulled the trigger, it went off. And yeah, like that moment with the smoke clearing and seeing my brother's body on the ground, I can still taste gunpowder. He's bleeding. I held him for his last couple of breaths. He was thirteen, five years older than me, and he was my best friend. We did everything together. When the cops got there, I remember being petrified, right, being like, I can't Please, don't tell my parents, Please don't tell

my parents. And not because I thought, I was like, they'll kill me my dad because the gun was loaded. They came for him too, I mean, they tried to charge me, and I remember my mom standing up and saying, gentlemen, this conversation is over. We're the adults. If you want anybody to be charged, you charge us. Goodbye. Yeah. The day I went back to school, which was like maybe a couple of weeks after it happened, right, the girl who I had like the biggest crush on, she called

me a murderer. And for a long time time, that's that's what yeah, And that's that's the narrative that kept playing over and over and over again. Every time I looked in the mirror, I hated what I saw. And this is the conversation with Alec. Right, So the media, she killed someone. It was an accident, yes, but people are going to say you murdered him, you did this, you did that, because they have to label something. Yeah, John, did you ever feel like you had to keep your

story a secret? I mean I lied about my story for a long time because I didn't want anybody else to call me a murderer. And I mean I made up I made up stories that somebody came in and shot my brother. We should have all of us been in therapy immediately, and um, and we weren't. And that was something we thought that we could kind of handle it right here. And everything became a coping mechanism, you know, Drugs became for me. Sex became a coping mechanism, alcohol

and any type of subs. And the fact of the matter is I should be dead, and quite a few times over I used my industry. I was TV, film and the entertainment industry. I was laying all these really dark roles because at that point, it was like I just wanted to take my insides and throw them out. I didn't want to feel it. It was so painful, and I was like, I know I'm going to die because I'm doing so many drugs at this point, you know,

it's it's inevitable. What was your rock bottom? When I was sixteen, I found out that my dad was cheating on my mom and had Parkinson's in the same night, uh, at the same time. And so at sixteen, I had all of this anger and and and and brokenness. My brother's dead and and I have shame from that, and I'm unworthy of that. But now my father has left me.

He died December two thousand and nineteen. We never got to sit down and be like, yo, unpack it, like this is what happened, fathered a son and like man to man. We never had that that real moment. I had to officiate his funeral, And that was my rock bottle. When I sat up there and I go, I have not I don't, I don't, I don't know what I'm doing. Me and this man had such a hard relationship. We can't be mended right now. I didn't know if if he really could forget, forgave me or not. You know,

I wasn't able to have a conversation with him. Yeah, I felt like I had killed my dad's son. That's what I thought, That's what I felt. I was so tunnel vision in my pain, and he was still in his pain and in his heard of, you know, feeling responsible losing his son, and in that moment, I go, no, this is this is the man that I'm going to be and I'm not going to succumb to all this stuff. I'm not going to fall backwards. When he died, I

knew that that was my time to step up. I started messaging people that I really trusted in the medical field and I said, I need your best PTSD therapist that you have ever encountered. It was a long process. Extensive therapy came in with that, and and and and you know, support groups and a bunch of things. Were you able to have that kind of deep dive with your mom? Oh, that's my girl, That's that's my that's it. That's the power in my story is the fact that

I'm here, I'm still here. You're still then, like, and I'm here and I'm breathing, and I'm coming into a place where I'm stepping into feeling like that unworthiness is like not going to hold it's grip me an what I'm saying, but I mean, for a long time, I didn't feel worthy of love, feel worthy of giving love, feeling worthy of breath you know, Jennifer, I know that you had picked up your daughter from a volleyball game

and then what happened after that. So, my daughter had a volleyball game and a friend of mine was going to bring her to me, but plans change that night ten minutes before this accident happened. I mean, we just pivoted to me going to get her, and we were care free, you know, to know about her volleyball game. She finally got her serve over the net and I pulled out of my friend's driveway. It was dark country road, and I came to the stop sign and I pulled

out into an intersection. And what I didn't know was that there was a man coming up over the hill and um, his motorcycle collided with my car. And when I came out of the entrance, I didn't understand what happened. It was so fast and it was like our car suddenly illuminated with light. And I remember looking over at my little girl and I braced for impact, thinking this

is it. Then I just felt this bump. I remember just being stun because there was no crash, there was no brooch jolt, and I looked at my rear view mirror, and then I and I put it together and I said, mommy's gotta go help him. I just grabbed my phone and ran to this man and styled nine on one and I was screaming. Helped me. I just held his hand even when the ambulance, I just didn't want to let go of his hands, and I prayed over him and I did everything that I could, and he passed

away two days later. And I'll never understand everything had to align just so, because what we found out later through the investigation was that there's a divot in that hill, and their hypothesis is when I looked left, he was in that It's like being in a blond. Yes, I'll always regret not treating that intersection like it was a busy road. What was part of your process of being able to heal from this? The first three six months, I didn't know how it was going to still live like.

It was so heavy. I thought, well, surely my heart will give out. I'll just die early. And I remember there was a moment where I had just stayed in bed all day for weeks. I was like, well, maybe if I just stay away when I do go and leave this earth, it will be easier on my children. But like coping, I think originally like just my family surrounded me and even then my faith. I mean, I love the Lord. I was so like, Lord, you abandoned me.

You abandoned me, this is not my purpose. Like wait a minute, you did not bring me on this earth to hurt this family. Because he had children, he was a father, he was a veteran. I think, um, my biggest shame was that I had judged people who were in scenarios like this. Here I am asking for mercy, asking for grace, and I didn't feel worthy and even as a mom, I didn't feel worthy to have my children. It felt like total devastation. I was totally prepared to

walk up my house and be stoned. Did you lose a lot of family of friends over this incident? People got weird, My inner circle got smaller. I think there were people who were like, mm, I don't know how to give you compassion, because if I give you compassion, I am not compassionate towards a family. They don't know

how to share right Because I'm the perpetrator. My whole identity was gone because I'm a school teacher, a wife, a mom, and then all of a sudden, I was like, I could go to prison for this every aspect of your life right, And my happy place was teaching because these kids didn't know. They didn't know that I was a killer. They just knew me as the math teacher. Can I ask your Jennifer, if you had any interaction with the family, it's really unfortunate, but you're advised immediately.

We are told by law enforcement lawyers, you do not say anything. And I did it anyway. I had my own memorial because I knew I couldn't go to his memorial, and I just wrote a card and a letter and I gave us a victim's services and I asked them to please give it to the family. I was facing possible charges because he had the right of way. So here I am also facing the shame destroying my family to where you don't feel worthy. But if I were to pursue them, I feel like it would be selfish.

That is their healing, and I want to protect them and I would never want them to say, oh, I forgive you to make me feel better. You know, I mean, that's wrong, and at first that's what you want, like, oh, I just want to tell him sorry, but I couldn't say sorry enough. We've done the worst of the worst to a family, the unforgivable. And if I can say, you know what, I accept who I am. I'm still guilty, but I've let go of the shame. I've let go of the shame. And part of that is by sharing

my story. And when you get free, if you get you share, you share it. That's real talk. I'm just so inspired by just the fact that both of you are reaching for for that faith and reaching for the light. Because even with my little things that be happening to me, and I'll be getting all the present stuff and you can go into you can take yourself into a really dark space and to have come through something like this, it takes work, and not every day is gonna be easy,

but you choose it right there you go. So this l A. Tom's headline grabbed my attention. The anguish of unintentional killing and how Alec Baldwin can learn to cope with it. It was written by psychologist Marianne Gray, who revealed I know this because I too, am an accidental killer. Marianne is the founder of Accidental Impacts, a support group for those who have unintentionally harmed someone. Jennifer says the community Maryanne created has been a lifeline. Jennifer, I know

you have never met her in person. I never met her in person. Hi, Hi, welcome jention. Oh my goodness, what a pleasure you know? I know, so, Mary, I can you tell us your story. I was a graduate student living in Ohio and I was driving home one beautiful spring afternoon along a rural highway when an eight year old boy who family lived alongside that highway darted into the road and I hit him, and he died before he reached the hospital. His name was Brian. Needless

to say, his family was devastated, and I also was devastated. Course, my mood kind of went back and forth from tremendous grief too absolute terror of what would happen to me, as well as the guilt sit in. Almost right away, I just felt that I did not deserve sympathy, I did not deserve compassion or support. So I almost immediately began to withdraw. And so what happened was all my thoughts, which some of which were pretty crazy, about myself and

my feelings. It all went underground and on the outside, I tried to act like your basic, normal twenty two year old and everything is fine. But I'm getting over it. I'm doing okay. I'm a stronger person, but inside I was just a mess. I couldn't drive. I would be so frightened. I thought I would see people in the roadway and I slam on my brakes, which is really dangerous. And so I sold my car. But I didn't say

I'm selling my car because I'm afraid. I said, oh, I'm selling my car because it's not good for the environment and I should just take the bus. And that continued for years, that divide between the innermy, which was self punishing, self hating, frightened, and the outer me, where I looked like, oh, you know, I finished my PhD, I got a great job, I married a good guy. You know, my life looked like it was working pretty well. But it wasn't. And the cost of that is a

tremendous loneliness. You can't live an authentic life if you're hiding. And so as I began my own process of finally dealing with it and speaking out and healing and recovering, I thought, I don't want anybody to be as alone as I felt, and that's a big part of why it started accidental impacts. I wanted to make amends and I wanted to make the world a better place. Marianne, you did mention that there was a level of self punishment and self hatred. What did that look like? I

did not have children. That was a big way I punished myself. I felt, first of all that I had taken a child from his mother, that I had caused them oceans of grief, and that I could not give myself that that joy, that I had to deny myself the joy of my own children. More generally, I did not want to allow myself happiness. And every time I started feeling that unbridled joy, I would stop myself and I would say, you killed a child, Marianne, you killed

a child. You do not deserve to feel like this. I think that's a very common thing with with trauma and PTSD, and anything that felt good is no, I'm not that's the voice. The voice is not worthy. I had so many negative voices. It was like a jumble. I kept saying, you're a killer, and I would ask myself, like Lord and my killer. I didn't understand how to

put the language to it. So I started just writing each thought that kept reoccurring, those intrusive thoughts, had to write them down, and I bring this notebook to my therapist and we'd go line by line, thought by thought, and one day I was like, what did I believe before? Because like for thirty six years, I believed A, B, and C. And I would take those thoughts one by one. I would have to look back and be like, is this rational? Does this? Does this line up to my

belief system, my faith? Or is this something that's a mental health issue and I need to let it go? How does it feel to be able to interact with other people have gone through a similar experience, because I would imagine that it has to be a relief, yes, lifeline. When I when I found mary Anne Sight, I had been praying for the Lord to show me someone like myself that I wasn't alone, because you feel like you're

going crazy. I mean, every time I try to share my story, it would be like, well did you know him? And I would just be like no. But I was weeping and grieving as if it was so deep and no one could understand it. So then I thought I was something wrong with me. I did want to make a point. The victim is a person who died, and the people grieving for that person. We're suffering, and we're anguished,

and we're despairing, and we're in need of support. But I don't consider us victims the person whose life was taken. It is about them, and I believe our hearts are big enough that we could have compassion for everybody. Men. Yeah, I was thinking about Also, we had a close associate at one point whose steps on accidentally grabbed a gun and he shot his brother as well. When I think about so many people from our community who run into these incidents, you know, for black people, we have to

feel the comfort that's right to even come out. And I think a lot of times I would imagine that there has been accidental killings where people have not been able to talk about it, have not been able to admit it because of the fear of the repercussions and because of the fear that they will lack the support and the willingness to be open to the understanding that

it was an accident. Know, there's a lot of research out there that indicates that when emotionally upsetting events occur and when the person involved is perceived as other, we're even more likely as observers and onlookers to assign more blad add to that the bias that exists in our society. I would be willing to bet that people of color are far more likely in these circumstances to be arrested

and then to serve time exactly. And so we're very eager to increase diversity within our community, and we're making some steps to do that. So, Marianne, you wrote an article about how Alec could heal. What do you think that journey looks like? Okay, I love the word journey. First of all, it is a journey, and I think there are three main challenges. The first challenge is managing trauma. Most people that I've encountered who have unintentionally harmed another

person are traumatized themselves. When you're traumatized, it's all encompassing. It's not just your emotions. You can't think clearly. Your body is affected, your sleep is affected. So I truly believe that nothing much can happen until the trauma is managed. And there's super good treatments out there right now for trauma. So I really encouraged people to seek therapy. Getting the trauma under control allows us to think, and then we can say what was I responsible for, what is my fault,

what was my fault? What does this mean for my life? And you could start to kind of journey down that road to some kind of healing or what I like to say is peace with yourself and you more old. But until the trauma is managed, that's very difficult. The second challenge is what I refer to as moral injury. It's a toxic stew of feelings when we let ourselves down, when we fail to live up to our own moral

standards and expectations. So what happens with moral injury, Well, we can be self destructive, we can even be suicidal, or we can abuse substances and we deny ourselves happiness. But I believe that guilt when we harm someone is appropriate. We would we think about someone who unintentionally ran over a child and didn't feel guilty. So so I don't

say we have to get rid of our guilt. I talk about channeling our guilt, and we do that, I believe through the third step, which is honoring our victim. And there's so many ways to do that. Some people invest in real pigeon. In spirituality, many people choose service. Some people invest in creative expression. I think you've done that, John, And many people just make a very mindful and conscious

decision to live with greater compassion and kindness. Not that we're not compassionate and kind already, but can we We could always. If I could speak to the Baldwin family, I would say, I really hope he's got the support of people watching him, because this takes time. It takes time. I had people watching me, and you had people. They're sitting in the fire, sitting in the pit because there's no easy pill. And I would tell the Baldwin family, sit in the pit. If he wants to scream, you

just sit there. If he needs to weep. I wept every day for a year, and my family caught those tears. They did. Thank you for sharing your stories, having the courage to share your stories with us, and the willingness, And I really feel like it's gonna help a lot

of folks. And I want to say, as I participate in this conversation, which has been so rich, that I I want to again recognize the child that died, and that I try to be a better person in his honor, and I believe that all of you, the five of you, have helped me do that today. So thank you. Say his name, Bryant. Would you like to save it? Thomas? Thank you all, thank you, Thank you. Beautiful. Mark O'Brien

made a fatal decision that killed his girlfriend Laura. Mark was sentenced to three months in prison, but says the reality of what he's done Hansom every single day, Mark, I have to start off with, I'm very sorry, and that is a brutal experience. I appreciate that too. Yeah, can you tell us your story? So, my girlfriend Laura planned a birthday party for me. I just turned the day before, and we were living together outside of Annapolis

in Maryland and I know here from there. Yeah, And we went out drinking with friends all night at the bar, and at the end of the night, I made the awful decision to try to drive us home, got it, and I flipped my car on outside of Annapolis, just a few miles from home, and Laura died in the accident that I caused. UM. I woke up a few hours later in the Shock Trauma Center at the University

of Maryland and had no idea what had happened? And I kept asking people in the hospital, was anyone else hurt? What happened? Nobody would tell me, and then finally a chaplain from the hospital pulled back the curtain around my bed, and I knew that the chaplain was there to tell me something pretty awful. And she said, Mark, somebody else was in the car with you. And I said, was it Laura? And she nodded and I said, is she okay um? And she said, Mark, she didn't make it.

And it was like my entire world just collapsed. In one moment, I was just full of despair and horror at what had happened, and the next moment, I felt nothing at all, and it was like I was watching this happen to this man that I knew was me, but it wasn't my story. And that was the worst day of my life. And then the state troopers showed up and said they needed to take my blood as part of their homicide investigation, and I was like, oh,

I didn't even think about this part of it. My dad came and I went to his house and I took a shower and I was just pulling like the glass cubes out of my head. I got out of the shower and I went to call David, Laura's father, and I just assumed that they would hate me, and they'd probably forbid me to come to her funeral, that they would never want to have anything to do with me, and and frankly, I would have been in total agreement

with that sentiment. But he picked up the phone and I started to apologize, and he said, Mark, thank god, you're all right. The state troopers came to our house and told us about Laura, but they wouldn't tell us what happened to you. We thought we'd lost you both. They were living in Florida at the time. They came up a few days later, and I was so scared to see them. But when they opened the door to their home, they just wrapped me in their love and affects.

And I get that you're not a stranger to them. And they had a sentence that this was an accident. I understand how they wrapped you in that love. It would take me a minute, Yeah, it would take me a minute. I was just sitting here, you know, thinking about Willow, you know, And I'm not saying I wouldn't have hurt in my heart and compassion in my heart, but I would be in a deep existential crisis. We

all know we shouldn't drink and drive. You know, It's like it's it's a different level of responsibility when you've made a choice that created the risk versus the fact that we all live in a world that has risk in it. That's yeah. I see that you're married now, Is that it? Yeah? How was that journey for you? Well? After the crash, I drank the pain away every day,

and I was at my friend chris Is. A group of our friends walked in with Um a woman I've never met before, Maria, and we strike up a conversation and I'm kind of like, Hi, Mark, it's nice to meet you. My girlfriend Laura just died. But Maria's father had just died from cancer, and I was surrounded by all these people who wanted to take care of me, who, on the one hand, I just felt I didn't understand

the grief. And meeting this person who I felt like could understand the loss part of it was really powerful, and we started spending more time together, and a few years later we got married Um, and we now have three children, an incredible life, and I can hold that in the same place that I can hold that I still really miss and love Laura and Maria can too, which is that's really that's important. That's Yeah, she's a

really good one. Uncle went back to that question. I'm thinking about if that happened with you and will and will was driving, Yeah, you know, and he was drunk and you got killed in our car accident or Willow withs been a part of our lives for I mean, he's part of the family. Yeah, it's tough. That's a tough one. We have Laura's father here, Um, David, we can talk to about this experience. Laura's father, David was crushed by the death of his daughter and he is

with us today. Thank you for coming, Thanks for asking me to be here. Yeah, this is great. Wow, this is um powerful. Yeah, tell us how you got through this, Laura. Every move I made, what's what would Laura want me to do? So that's the answer. He did what he thought Laura would wanted to do. Yeah, I knew she wanted me to do it this way. I could tell how those two were and how they were together. That was a very strong and deep love between the two of them. It was so obvious. You could see it,

you could feel it. How um elastic your heart has to be in that moment, you know, and it's so selfless. So how was it when you two first saw each other. We helped each other, and you know, we still had each other every time we see each other, so they don't bet At the airport last night, we didn't meet with a handshake. We met with a hug. So we had already lost Laura and we didn't need to lose Mark. And he made a mistake that you know, we you know, we all have to live with. But Mark, he's a

good man. He was doing good things and he's continued to do good things. So I'm glad we still have them. It felt like, because you guys, we're so forgiving from the first moment. Sometimes I just wanted to be like, just hate me. Yeah, But at the same time, because you guys just removed that from the from the conversation, that there was more commonality and in this shared loss, yeah, well there was. That's unconditional love. I just have to

say it. I I try to make Lord proud. I don't know, you know, everybody's religious aspects here, but you know, if there's a heaven or not. I don't want to be wrong. It's if there's really one there, I don't want to be wrong. So my job is to get there. And so for eternity, that's the way I try to That's what I try to do. I'm not always were good. Yeah, And it's and it's what we say about forgiveness all the time, that forgiveness is for you as much as

this for the other person. David, can you tell us a little bit about Laura before we go just a little. She really was one of those people when she walked in her room you knew she was something. She just lit it up. She just absolutely beautiful. You know, in my eyes, she was absolutely beautiful. Yeah. It was like do you talk about like a spark of life? She had like a bonfire of life. Well, I want to thank you both for coming story and thanks nice about Laura.

Thank you. I'm actually one of his his daughter, Charlotte, I'm her godfather. Wow, you keeping the connection. It was quite an honor to be asked and to do that. And I appreciate you having us here. Well, thank you guys, just making you guys see you because this was an awesome show. This was so hard for me to come out here, and you made it so easy, just like sitting down and talking and you made it so easy for me. So I appreciate that. David. You are amazing.

You are so sharp. I was watching you in the first series and it was just so you're so I see where you get it. But yeah, I mean, yeah, forever you have to they rub off on you. You're goin to interject and it's like perfect and read time. So you do a great job. Well they do think so a lot of people thinking I'll be saying you crazy stuff. To join the Red Table Talk family and become a part of the conversation, follow us at facebook

dot com slash red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.