Follow-Up Story

The Follow-Up Story

Do you ever wonder what happens to those people? I refer to the people who make a brief appearance in our newspapers and news broadcasts, only to fade from page, screen and memory.

I always wondered, so, I endeavoured to track down some of these lost heroes and forgotten fools.

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The trail began with a trawl through the paper’s achives, to root out some of these footnotes and sidebars - footnotes and sidebars soon to become full-page stories. Over the next five days, I will share the ongoing stories of five former subjects of the news. I will reveal how the event that led to their brief coverage has affected the course of their lives, if it has. I will let you all in on the current struggles and victories that these five currently live with.

Day 1 – Thomas Nash

Thomas Nash hit the headlines on March 28th 1997. It was a day like any other and the events that transpired occur on a daily basis in every country in the world. Thomas Nash was involved in a car crash.

A motorcyclist skidded on a diesel spillage causing another motorist to swerve, hitting Nash’s oncoming vehicle. Nash’s car then left the road and crashed into a tree. He and the motorcyclist were both hospitalised with broken bones, the other driver was described as ‘the walking wounded’.

Today, almost nine years later, we find Nash living in the same house and travelling daily to the same job he had at the time of the accident. Not that he seems to mind.

“I look back at my life, you know, and I don’t see any of what you might call ‘Movie Moments’,” Thomas states, “I don’t mind, I mean, that’s what we go to the movies for, right?”

Asked about the accident, Nash says, “I don’t think about it, to be honest. I mean, before you asked me, it had probably been a year or more since it crossed my mind.”

In the immediate aftermath of the event the situation was a little different, though. “Yeah, for a while I stopped driving, and I hated other people driving me. I just couldn’t relax in a car. I didn’t trust other drivers.”

“I don’t know how I managed to get back behind the wheel. Time heals all wounds, people say that. Maybe, you know, I just stopped worrying about it. A few months passed, nothing else happened, I went back to driving.”

Looking around Nash’s home, it is obvious he is settled here. Everything has its place. His enormous collections of CDs & DVDs fill custom-built cupboards in the living room. The place is full, but not cramped or cluttered.

Nash seems proud of himself. He is a rock in life’s river; staying still while the world rushes by.

Day 2 – Cheryl Pike

The winter of '98 - '99 was a harsh one. Snow and ice covered much of the country from mid-December until late February. The cold weather can bring many problems, but it is very unlikely anyone predicted the incident that would befall Cheryl Pike.

On the fifth of January, Pike was walking along Charles Street on her way to work. The previous day had seen a slight thaw, followed by the cold snap of a clear night. High on the old post office building on Charles Street some of the melt water had run into the cracks in a section of the building's carved granite balustrade. All night the trapped water had expanded as the descending cold turned it to ice. The pressure of this expansion widened the cracks, eventually freeing a block of cold granite. Like a chunk of the arctic ice shelf dropping into the sea, the block fell from the building, plummeting towards the passing pedestrian. It struck Pike on the head and back, knocking her to the cold ground and shattering her shoulder blade. Fortunately her head received only a glancing blow.

Pike remained in traction in Blazington Hospital for two months.

Since the accident Pike has become a virtual recluse. When I contacted her to arrange the interview I asked her to suggest a time, “Any time, any day,” she replied, “I’m always in the house.”

She occupies a small cottage, in a quiet residential street. The garden is well tended and there is nothing unusual on first inspection. Bright coloured flowers line the front path and the lawn is closely clipped.

I ring the door bell and the door is immediately drawn back, a small nose and a pair of dark eyes peer out from behind it. This is Cheryl Pike.

From the eagerness with which she invites me in, I gauge that she must receive few visitors. She later confirms as much, “I don’t bother anyone, and no one bothers me,” she explains, “I keep myself to myself.”

I ask her why she no longer ventures outside, after a pause she answers, “I’m afraid. Well, I was afraid, and then it just became my life. I don’t go out anymore. That’s it. That’s all.”

There is something in her voice as she says this. Regret or resignation, I am not certain. She tells me a little more of how she fills her days and how she earns a living. She designs advertising layouts for magazines. Clients come to her because she was already an established name at the time of the accident and has continued to produce good work. In her spare time she reads magazines - delivered by the paperboy - to keep up with the trends in advertising in the various fields her clients occupy. The personal computer in her cramped study seems to be her main lifeline to the outside world. Work comes and goes from here; she visits online chat rooms, spending hours talking to friends she has met there. She tells me she has spoken to others who exist just like she does; it is as if they are alone together, she says.

I enquire as to how she maintains such a well kempt garden, “Ha ha, you thought you had me there!” she exclaims, “One of the local kids does it for me. I caught him trying to put a firework through the letterbox a couple of years ago. He’s a nice lad, actually, wants to be a gardener when he grows up. It’s a mutual benefit; I pay him too, of course."

As I leave, I ask her if she will walk a little way with me, just to see how she will react. She gives me a small smile and slowly shakes her head.

Day 3 – Brian Sangster

Brian Sangster was the hero of the day. That day was the 7th of June 1995.

A child, Millie Taylor, had slipped from a river bank into the frothing and churning current. The river was in spate; water from recent heavy rains had raised the level and quickened the current. Further downstream Sangster heard the shouts before he saw the lifeless form floating past. He dived into the water, riding the current until he reached Millie and managed to fight their way to the safety of the bank.

Eight and a half years later Sangster was dead. Killed working as a medic during the Iraq War. He was treating the injured, following the blast from a roadside bomb when snipers opened fire on the casualties and onlookers. A single round pierced his spine. He was twenty-seven years of age.

I learned all of this during the research for this piece. His mother, Sandra, agreed to speak in his place, sharing a little of her son’s memory.

“When he saved that girl, we were so proud. Brian played it down though, said, ‘It was a spur of the moment thing, anyone would have done the same.’ He never talked or bragged about it, even turned down one of those awards they hand out for these things.”

While we talk, pictures of Brian watch over us. In the pictures he smiles at family picnics, smiles as he receives his medical degree and smiles in front of a tent in the Iraqi desert. She follows my gaze. “He was always smiling, my boy.” A small tear wells in her eye, but she quickly brushes it away.

“He finished his university course and decided to do something with his skills as a doctor before settling down to the life of a hospital doctor over here. He went out there to help people, and look what happened!”

I enquire into Sangster’s life between the rescue and his death. Sandra explains that he was busy with university, medicine is a demanding subject. He also had a job in a bar to fund his education. She supposed he had little time for anything else.

There is a sense that Sandra feels her son’s life and years of hard work have amounted to little besides the painful memories she now harbours.

Day 4 – Andy Fraser

Andy Fraser, was a petty criminal with a long list of arrests at the time of his accident. He had the ambition to take on bigger and more lucrative jobs, but he lacked ideas and initiative. In early 2001 he hatched a scheme to change all that. Through watching years of American crime dramas, he learned that banks made records of banknote numbers that arrived at their branches, and this was what was meant by ‘marked bills’. If these bills were passed the numbers would be flagged and the criminals apprehended. As a result, Fraser hatched a plan to rob a security van travelling from a day of pick-ups, before it reached the bank and the numbers were recorded.

Displaying uncharacteristic patience, Fraser waited until Mid December in order to hit a van laden with the Christmas takings of various retailers and therefore offering him a bigger payoff.

Unfortunately, Fraser’s plan did not extend to an effective means of intercepting the security van. He failed to realise that standing in the middle of the road and pointing a shotgun at the windscreen of an armoured vehicle is not likely to cause the occupants much concern. When the vehicle failed to show any sign of slowing down, Fraser released a warning shot. The shotgun pellets ricocheted off the reinforced glass, peppering Fraser, before the van crashed into him, shattering major bones including five ribs, his left hip and shoulder, his right ankle and fracturing his skull. Fraser spent the night of 17th December 2001, and the next forty-four nights, in a secure hospital under armed guard.

Based on the irrefutable evidence Fraser was charged and convicted with armed robbery and sentenced to eight years in prison. However, he was released in July 2006, as a result of good behaviour and allowing for the fact that he was unlikely to re-offend in his handicapped condition.

Fraser declined an interview for this feature; however, sources reveal that he now lives with his mother and claims disability allowance.

Day 5 – Emily Clement

On the 7th of June 1995, Emily Clement slipped into a fast flowing river. Of course, she was a child at that time and not yet married. Millie Taylor was the child in the water that day. The child Brian Sangster saved.

Now aged 24, Clement still remembers the strong arms who plucked her from the rushing current. She recalls nothing of the actual incident after the point of slipping near the edge of the water, she hit her head and was unconscious during the rescue, but she has a strong recollection of Sangster’s concerned face breaking into a smile as she came to.

“I’ll never forget him,” she says, “without him I wouldn’t be here now.”

Sangster’s death slipped by in the lists of war casualties and comes as a shock to Clement. She calls a halt to the interview for a few minutes, struggling to compose herself. Finally she is ready to continue.

“It’s strange, thinking that he’s gone, you know. I haven’t spoken to him for years but I often think about him. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be here and now he’s gone. It just doesn’t seem right.”

I ask how the accident has affected her life, “Well, I think it helps that I don’t really remember anything about my time actually in the water. For a while I was a little nervous around water, but my Dad suggested I should take some advanced swimming lessons at the local pool. Eventually I did a life-saving course too, and I work as a lifeguard at the pool now while I am studying.”

Intrigued, I ask what she is studying, “Medicine, I want to be a doctor. For a long time I’ve wanted to be able to save the lives of others, just like I was saved. If the accident hadn’t happened I’m not sure I’d have taken this route.”

After she qualifies Clement plans to take up a post at the local hospital, gaining experience and beginning to pay off debts amassed during her years of study. Following this, she says, she intends to travel to Africa and work in a clinic, helping the poor there. Again this is something inspired by her own salvation all those years ago.

To me it looks as if Brian Sangster’s life was anything but wasted.

THE END

Note: All the stories and characters contained in this piece are entirely fictitious. Any similarities to actual people or events are purely coincidence.