Having borrowed the first and second seasons of The X-Files from a friend over the past month, I'm getting a strange feeling about a current event in the area.
Having watched the first fifty or so episodes again, many for the first time in fifteen years, I was very impressed that my affection for the show has held up through my maturation. Other things that I hadn't noticed before, upon first seeing the episodes as a high schooler, were loud and clear this time...like the characters Scully and Mulder being fully in love, and the mythology becoming canonical even if it was a paint-as-you-go writing method.
In any case, let me say that I wish the grieving families no disrespect, especially since I'm making an allusion to a fictional television show in respect to the accident.
Maybe you've heard about the tragedy, but I'll summarize the events anyway.
On Sunday, July 26th, on the way home from a weekend camping trip, a mom from Long Island entered an exit lane on the Taconic Highway and drove for 1.7 miles against traffic along the busy thoroughfare before crashing headlong into an SUV. Three men in the SUV, including a father and son, were killed instantly, along with the mother, her daughter and three of her nieces. Her five-year old son was pulled from the wreckage and rushed to the ICU. He is clinging to life.
An autopsy performed on the mother revealed her to be in good health. Toxicology results are pending. Her friends said that she's driven that stretch of road hundreds of times, which to them makes it that much more bizarre that she could have made such a fatal mistake.
The first strange thing about this crash was that the mom's cell-phone was found along the side of the road, a few miles before the crash, on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, right after the Tappan Zee Bridge, which she crossed before heading south back to Long Island.
A second strange thing...1.7 miles? The wrong way? A busy Sunday afternoon? 1.7 miles?
When the camping trip ended, the mother and father left at the same time, in separate cars, heading to the same place. The dad was going straight there, the mom was taking the kids to get some breakfast before heading home. They stopped at a McDonald's. There have been reports that for a sixty mile stretch between the McDonald's and the point where she entered the north-bound section of the highway heading south, a minivan matching the description of the one she was driving (same make, color, driven by a woman, full of kids) had been driving erratically; weaving in the lanes, flashing high-beams and honking, passing people on the shoulder.
The woman's brother, and father of the three girls, had received a call from her while she was on the road, after breakfast, apparently before her phone was ejected from the minivan. Her brother said she called and said she felt sick and needed help.
A very large piece of this puzzle has yet to be pulled from its hiding place. Something's definitely missing. And, for anybody reading this who might actually eat at a McDonald's, and might be in upstate New York now or soon, I'd avoid the Mickey-D's close to Liberty, NY for a while.
If I were an investigator I'd want the toxicology results, and wouldn't be surprised to see something strange like spikes of meth or PCP. Then I'd head to Liberty.
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