August 9, 2009, I was only six years old at the time. I was still young enough that I looked up to my dad as if he was my personal superman, invincible. We were headed south on highway 65 from Balsam Lake towards Star Prairie. He was taking me to my grandma’s house for the week while he was going to work to keep our bills paid and the cupboards stocked with my favorite snacks. I sat in the front passenger seat of our maroon Jeep, at that time I called it the red car since I didn’t know what maroon, or a Jeep was.
If you think I’m talkative now, you should have heard me when I was little. I did not shut up, and I don’t know how I didn’t annoy more people. I was talking about god knows what, just babbling on about something not important enough for me to remember. Then my dad sternly said to me, “Shut up.” I was stunned by the tone in his voice, due to him never using that tone with me before. I wanted to ask him why, but I didn’t dare risk annoying him further. He wasn’t angry, but his tone told me not to mess around and take whatever what happening extremely seriously.

We started to slow down, when suddenly there was a bang! I lurched forward in my seat while simultaneously being pushed down by my dad, the seat belt tugging on my stomach as it locked in place. I slowly sat up, looking straight ahead through the windshield onto the road. I didn’t see anything abnormal, except there was a lot of cracks in the windshield.

“Are you okay Alli?” My dad asked, fear flooding his voice.
“Yeah,” I said turning to look at my invincible superhero of a father. As I turned to look at him, I didn’t notice anything except his face. It was covered in blood, and I didn’t know why. I had seen blood before, our family hunts every year, so it wasn’t like this was the first time I had seen blood. However, I had never seen human blood in this volume. It was all over his face, and it was a terrifying sight that I wish I could take back the memory of. As if by some sort of curse, as soon as I realized that it was blood, I felt sharp pains in my stomach. I started to cry and scream for help, harder and louder than I had ever done before. I screamed so hard, my throat felt raw almost immediately. I didn’t care, because I was in pain and I needed help for myself and my dad who didn’t seem as invincible as he was before.
I don’t remember what happened after that for a bit. My brain blocked out whatever happened, most likely from shock. Based off what my dad says, all that really happened was the people in the house that the accident happened in front of came out to help us. Then he went to check on the guy who hit us, who my dad found out was dead. Then 911 was called, and they came and confirmed that the man was in fact dead.

The man that passed away was 24-year-old Jason O’Malley. He had been riding his motorcycle with his friends when Cristopher Lyman, 36, failed to stop at a stop sign and nicked O’Malley’s bike. O’Malley then started to swerve in attempt to miss a full-on collision with Lyman. He kept swerving until his headlight collided with the driver’s side headlight of our maroon jeep. He flung over the hood of the vehicle, his head hitting the windshield creating a large hole and spraying glass all over my father and me. My dad told me last year that, as he flew through the air, O’Malley made eye contact with my dad. The poor man had to spend his last moments were spent looking a man, whom he didn’t know, in the eye.

An ambulance came and took me to the Amery Hospital and Clinic, where a doctor came out and checked on me briefly. The doctor poked me in the stomach, to which I responded with an angered “Ouch.” He then told the paramedics, “Take her,” which meant my father and I would be taking a ride in a helicopter to Regions Hospital in the Twin Cities. On the way, I had an IV put in my arm. Recalling that day, I thought I was mad because of the IV, but my dad informed me that I was mad that I couldn’t see out of the helicopter.
The pain in my stomach ended up being me needing to use the restroom. I had glass taken out of my arms, which I still have scars from. My dad ended up being fine, except for messed up nerves in his left shoulder. Christopher Lyman got sentenced one year in jail, which I believe wasn’t enough for ending a man’s life. Nonetheless, we are taught to forgive just as God forgives us. I have not accomplished that yet, but it is on my bucket list and I hope to achieve that.