EVERETT — From his hospital bed, amid the waves of doctors, nurses and rehab therapists checking on him, Scotty Becktell must come to grips with the likelihood he will never walk again.
His voice on this drizzly February morning is a raspy whisper. The night before he spiked a fever that prompted a move to another floor for closer monitoring.
He is thankful for friends and family who are helping him and to finally shed his hospital gown in favor of a black T-shirt with the phrase “You’re killing me Smalls” — a popular refrain expressing youthful exasperation from the iconic baseball movie “The Sandlot.”
The Everett man ended up at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center after a dark SUV slammed into him while he was walking across 128th Street south of Everett.
Becktell, 22, was on his way to his graveyard shift at McDonald’s shortly before 10 p.m. Jan. 23. His job was about a five-minute walk from the mobile home park where he lives. Becktell was in a crosswalk.
He remembers stepping off the sidewalk and waking up in the hospital. Nothing in between.
“My emotions are kind of everywhere right now,” he said.
Sometimes he thinks about the driver who didn’t stop to help.
He doesn’t understand how someone could just leave him there.
Becktell wasn’t the first pedestrian to be hit on 128th Street west of I-5.
Between 2008 and 2015, 20 people have been hit while crossing 128th along a 1.2-mile stretch that connects the interstate with Highway 99. It is a busy thoroughfare logging more than 14 million vehicle trips in a given year.
In most crashes, the drivers stopped and stayed on the scene. But in a few, the victims have been simply left in the roadway.
In January 2015, Diana Martinka, 53, was struck in the 200 block of 128th SW and later died. She was not in a crosswalk. Her case has been frustrating for detectives with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office Collision Investigations Unit. Witnesses were not consistent with their descriptions of the vehicle and there was no good video footage.
In July 2010, Roberto Beltran, 45, died when he was hit in the 1100 block of 128th Street SW. He was intoxicated. That driver also took off and has not been caught.
Another fatal car-pedestrian accident on New Years Eve in 2011 was not a hit and run.
Other people have been struck on streets nearby.
A 65-year-old woman was hit in October 2015 off 4th Avenue W. near 128th. She was treated for head injuries, a broken pelvis and other fractures at Harborview. The driver fled. That case also is unsolved.
Sgt. Andy Kahler heads up the sheriff’s office Collision Investigation Unit. He knows the area well.
Pedestrian accidents off 128th often involve people making right or left hand turns. Drivers tend to be focused on traffic and not on people crossing the street, he said.
Kahler knows that some drivers who leave crash scenes panic or might be under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He wishes they would take personal responsibility.
“You don’t want the same thing to happen to your family member,” he said.
In the case of Scotty Becktell, detectives have identified a suspect and are continuing their investigation. No charges have been filed. Vehicle assault cases can take many months to wrap up.
The news of a suspect brings some level of relief to Becktell, who suffered a spinal cord injury, concussion, broken wrist, broken ring finger and fractures to three other fingers.
“My future,” he said, “is trying to be independent without walking.”
Childhood friend Michael Trettevik visits Becktell.
“It is such a shame,” he said. “Things were going pretty good in his life. Then boom. A brick wall. It always happens to the nicest guys.”
Becktell’s days now are filled with rehabilitation therapy sessions.
His mother, Lynn Becktell, watches. She appreciates that he can smile as he’s put through his workout regimens.
Scotty has faced a series of challenges in his lifetime.
He needed speech therapy through the fifth grade. He often was picked on. He fell behind in school.
Yet he kept plugging away. A year after his classmates graduated, he earned his high school diploma from Aces High School, an alternative campus in the Mukilteo School District. More than a dozen relatives attended his ceremony, proud of him for sticking it out.
“He has definitely fought his way through life,” Lynn Becktell said.
She hopes in his new life her son will have the same resolve.
Scotty said he is looking forward to heading home.
Between now and his release, doors must be widened to the double-wide mobile home. Improvements must be made to the bathroom. A ramp is needed.
Lynn Becktell hopes drivers will take heed of what happened to her son and exercise care when they drive along 128th Street.
“People are just in a hurry all the time,” she said. “They need to slow down.”
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
