ALMA – RCMP Cpl. Glen Murphy is a regular speaker at Northumberland Regional High School this time of year.
He along with other first responders and a representative from Mothers Against Drunk Driving warn students about the dangers of drinking and driving. Most times they listen. Sometimes they don’t.
Murphy will never forget one year they passed out red Mothers Against Drunk Driving pencils at the presentation. That very night he went to an accident on a sharp bend on Alma Road. As he approached the bloody accident his eyes caught something on the ground beside the car – the same red pencil they had passed our earlier.
And so he pleaded with students at NRHS to pay close attention for a bit as he shared some of his experience as an RCMP officer.
Murphy still chokes up a bit when he thinks back to June 27, 2002. As he started his morning shift he heard about an accident that had happened the night before. A 10-year-old boy was biking along the road with a relative when he was struck by a car. He was thrown almost 300 feet and is believed to have died instantly. The driver kept on driving.
Murphy and the other RCMP officers were given the task of finding out who did it.
Through their investigation they would discover it was a drunk driver who had struck him. The man had been driving an uninsured, unsafe car with brakes that didn’t work and an alternator issue that caused the headlights to not work properly. All day the man had been drinking. That man was convicted and sentenced for his crime, but Murphy said the loss of the boy had a tremendous impact on his family and friends.
“It affected me. It affected every one of those investigators and their families. It affected firemen and their families. It affected the community. That’s a small community out there. It affected the community of Pictou County. A lot of people talked about it. It hurts.”
As students celebrate the end of the high school years, Murphy encouraged them to have fun, but also be safe. If they get into a situation where they or the person they’re driving with has had alcohol, he encouraged them to call a reliable adult or a taxi. Any parent would rather get a call in the middle of the night asking for a drive home, rather than to hear that their child has been hurt or killed in an accident.
