On this day, thirty-eight years ago, at approximately 9:00 p.m. my fiancé and I were driving down Interstate 10 when we ran out of gas. We pulled to the shoulder and proceeded to walk the mile or so towards the nearest gas station. I had been walking on the outside of the road and he moved me to the inside. He even made a joke about not wanting me to get hit by a car. I said I wouldn’t, couldn’t live without him and he said that I would, but that as a man it was his job was to protect me. We were holding hands. We had just said I love you to each other. I heard a loud noise (a thump) and turned to my right. I turned around in a complete circle wondering why he was no longer beside me. Everything was in slow motion. Even now, I remember it in slow motion.
I saw instead that he was laying across the hood of a car. A car which suddenly sped up and flung him into the air. I never knew a human body could look like that. I never knew that a person would bounce when they hit the ground that hard. I ran through the sand and it took forever to reach him. Mercifully, he was unconscious. I remember his ankle was broken. I ran out into traffic to try to flag down help. I stood in the middle of a dark freeway with semi trucks whizzing by me on both sides and I heard him call my name. I looked over where Andy lay and realized that someone had pulled up to help. I turned to run back to them, across a lane of traffic. A truck horn sounded and I stepped back as the truck sped by me with literal inches to spare. I realized at that moment that I was standing on the median line between two lanes of traffic on the interstate.
Two men had stopped and they asked me what had happened. I explained. A couple pulled up and then drove down the road to the CHP station. One of the men started CPR even though he told me it wouldn’t work. I begged him anyway. I sat by Andy’s side and kept asking him not to leave me. At 9:23 p.m. I felt him go. I know the time, I asked.
An ambulance pulled up. The paramedics began their work, but couldn’t get a heartbeat or a pulse. They tried everything. The driver told me not to look. I heard over the radio that they had caught the woman down the road. CHP had actually pulled her over because she was drunk. When they heard the description of the vehicle, they examined the front of her car and arrested her. I will never forget what the bumper of her car looked like when they brought it in the Courtroom months later. Nor will I forget the paint transfers on his clothing or the Judge, sitting with his head on the bench, listening to the last minutes in the life of a man we all knew and loved.
Andy, Endre K. Szatmari, was the only son of Hungarian immigrants. They stole out of Hungary in the middle of the night when he was fifteen. On the boat to Australia, he learned English and for the next eight years, he worked at every available job in order to be able to afford to come to America. He became a US citizen and served in the Air Force, as a police officer, and as a Marshall. He was an active Marshall when he was murdered.
Yes. Murdered. When you get in your car after drinking yourself to oblivion and beyond and then drive, you spin a wheel. Will you murder someone or will you get home alive? In 1982, the laws weren’t nearly as strict as they are now so the woman that murdered him got six months. Six months for a life. She’s on Facebook. I found her. I hope she’s changed. By the time she went to jail for Andy’s death, she had had four drunk driving arrests and convictions. She told the arresting officers that she was glad she’d killed a cop. So. Murder is not too strong a word regardless of the legal definition.
I’m sorry if this story makes you upset, but if it makes you tell your kids, your friends, your loved ones not to drink and drive, then that might be part of why I’m still alive. We were holding hands when he was killed and I was not.
