He calls it the bullpen. It has nothing to do with livestock or baseball. The fence behind the Washington State Patrol office north of Marysville corrals wrecked cars.
It’s dead quiet except for the occasional song of a bird and the hum of I-5 traffic.
Curt Ladines, a detective with the patrol’s traffic investigation division, walks me through the vehicle graveyard. He speaks for those who can’t.
"See that truck?" he said, pointing out an orange Chevy with a flattened cab. "A 19-year-old from east Snohomish County was killed. He was coming home with a friend from a party. He loses control, hits a telephone pole, the kid is ejected. We think there was racing or some horsing around, but without a confession, nothing."
Ladines is one of four detectives in the patrol’s District 7 office, covering Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom and Island counties. He investigates felony cases, including vehicular assaults and vehicular homicides.
In his office are accident reconstruction drawings, highly technical graphics used in court. The tidy diagrams show road configurations, skid marks and directions and angles in which vehicles were traveling when something occurred — something split-second, something deadly.
Outside in the bullpen, nothing is tidy.
The back end of a white Honda is crumpled like paper. "There were three Eastern Europeans in the car, going 95 to 100 miles an hour," Ladines said. "All three were ejected; one died."
"This red T-Bird, the mom and the grandma were killed on Highway 92, the man had been drinking. He pleaded out to a DUI. We couldn’t get vehicular homicide."
He stopped at a late-model truck with a whole side gone and described a pending vehicular homicide case. "It was under I-405 in a construction zone. The truck hit a dumpster there for construction, and the cab was opened up like a can opener. That driver had been drinking."
"In this one, a brother killed a brother," he said, looking at a Honda severed in half. "It was on Highway 203 in the Monroe area. They hit a pole, it split apart, very high speeds."
Ladines pointed out "head strikes," the spider-web patterns on shattered windshields. "If you look closely, sometimes you see hair," he said. I did not look closely. I did notice an old latex glove in a mangled car, possibly tossed at the scene by a paramedic.
Cars still contain all sorts of things, from beverage cups to blankets, that have the look about them of folks going their ordinary ways. These objects show the humanity and vulnerability of people who may believe they’re invulnerable as they rocket down the road. It’s a powerful feeling to go 70 mph with the radio blasting. But impact reduces steel and glass to fragments.
"I think this would be good for driver’s education," Ladines said. "This being evidence, it’s sacred. But I could show kids these cars and just how fragile the human body is.
"When kids get their driver’s license, it’s freedom they’ve never had before. Where you go, the speed you go, it’s determined by you. It’s a huge responsibility," said Ladines, allowing that when he was in college, "I got into cars with drunk drivers."
Now, having witnessed so much, this father of a 6-year-old and a 9-year-old said, "I’ve told my wife they’re just not going to drive."
Last week we read about the traffic tragedy that killed 16-year-old Georgia Pemberton the night of her Lake Stevens High School prom. A Bellevue man has been arrested, and road rage may be involved.
In this season of proms and graduations, the wrecked-car bullpen is a sobering reminder that it’s not just teen-agers who are injured or who hurt others. It’s not just prom season. It’s driving season.
"Summer is busier," Ladines said. "There’s more drinking. People are out. The weather is better, they drive faster, they’re not as careful."
I’ll tell you this. Seeing those cars, I hardly wanted to turn the key in mine. I am more careful.
Ladines dreads Monday mornings. "I hate those calls, family members trying to understand why.
"Death gets to me," he said. "I wake up at night."
Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.
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