2:30 AM. Last night. Deafening sounds of splitting metal, breaking glass. A cacophony of sirens, shouting, moaning.

Just a few metres from my bedroom window, a car had ditched into the park, directly across the street, just metres from my bedroom. I jumped out of bed in a state of total disorientation. First thoughts were that a car was in the house, at the very least in the front garden. That’s how close the crash had sounded.

Half dreaming, I scrambled out of the bedroom and out the front door. I saw three police cars and several police standing over the crash victim. He was moaning in agony, repeatedly, every couple of seconds, in rhythm, lying face down in the park, a few metres from the car. I don’t know if he had been thrown from the car, or had just been pulled out by the police.

The pulsating lights and blaring police radios made the scene seem sureal.

I can’t tell if the victim’s moaning, or the police shouting at him to ’shut up’, were more disturbing. I was worried that an ambulance wouldn’t come on time.

The scene was so close to my front door, that I couldn’t stay outside to see what was going on, I felt like the police would become abusive as soon as they became aware of my presence. I was concerned for my family. When I went back inside, I could hear the radios and victim’s moaning, as the police lights flashed through my bedroom curtains. It went on for what seemed like a very long time. The last sounds I heard were of the car being dragged onto a tow truck. I felt really helpless.

Today I looked around at the park, and tried to determine what might have happened.

From what I have seen, I can guess that the car was being chased from the direction it was travelling in. It was then flanked from the front, by a third police car. In an attempt to escape, the driver turned hard at 90 degrees into the park and smashed the car against the kerb, perhaps breaking the engine and/or front axle in the process, but bringing the car to an abrupt halt. He could have been thrown from the vehicle, through the front windscreen, or was perhaps pulled from the car by the police. This is pure speculation, on my part.

I wonder now, what has become of the driver; if he’s still alive; what the events were which led up to the event.

Living so close to the road, it seems in a way absurd that our society is kept afloat, by this constant flow of vehicles, all teetering on an edge between movement from place to place; and a most extreme violence. These cars and trucks becoming missiles which mame and kill, once they stray off their path, or become out of control.

Although in a state of perpetual unease, due to the hourly screeching of tires, and revving of engines: an unease that often leads to intimidation, anguish and anger; I found myself only able to reflect on the man’s story; the events which led up to him lying on his belly, in the park across from my bedroom window.