Survivor: ‘I looked at all three of my friends’

LYNNWOOD — Tyler Gilbert choked back tears as he recalled the moments just before the car he was riding in with three of his best friends slid off North Road and smashed into a tree early Saturday morning.

Fellow Meadowdale High School graduates designated driver Brandon Norton, 21, and Ehlo Blacknall, 20 were pronounced dead at the scene.

“It’s a hard thing because they were like my brothers,” he said Wednesday. “But all you can do is just stay strong and not let this bring you down.”

Gilbert, 20, suffered a broken neck and back in the collision. He sat behind the front passenger seat occupied by Trevor Moore, 21, who is recovering at Harborview Medical Center with a severe head injury.

Gilbert was released from the hospital Sunday.

As the designated driver, Norton had just shuttled some other friends home after a party and had returned to give Blacknall, Gilbert and Moore a ride home, too.

“The corner came up out of nowhere,” Gilbert said. “Brandon tried turning the wheel to the right but it just kept going straight because the road was so wet.”

Just before Norton’s Volkswagen Corrado struck a tree, “I looked at all three of my friends,” Gilbert said. “Nobody said a word.”

Gilbert said he was knocked out for a second.

When he awoke, “I was the only one conscious in the car.”

He remembers a commotion.

“People were screaming and yelling, ‘You OK?’” Gilbert said.

A man who lives near the crash scene broke a side window on the car to help get the victims out. “I crawled out halfway myself,” Gilbert said.

He walked around, anxious to check on his friends.

“I didn’t feel much pain,” he said. “I had so much adrenaline going through my body.”

He was friends with Blacknall for six years and Norton for two.

“They were all like my brothers, pretty much,” he said. “There wasn’t a day that we weren’t together.”



Oscar Halpert: 425-339-3429, ohalpert@heraldnet.com.