“Help me! Help me!”
Randy Van Wyk heard a voice calling out down a long rural driveway through the open window of his truck. It was the middle of the night on Oct. 27, and he had pulled over on Highway 236 about three kilometres north of Balmoral when he saw a smashed-up vehicle on fire.
He dialled 911 and emergency responders showed up a few minutes later to locate 27-year-old Colton Letkeman, who had dragged himself out of the burning vehicle and partway down the driveway in an effort to reach the house for help. It wasn’t an easy feat with two broken legs and no jacket in the chilly fall night.
Earlier that evening, Letkeman had been the designated driver for a night out with friends in the city. He was on his way home after dropping off his buddy. When he was about 2.5 kilometres from his house, a deer jumped out of a bush and stood in the middle of the road. Letkeman swerved to avoid the deer but ended up clipping the back of it. He lost control of his truck and crashed into a tree. The truck folded up like an accordion, and Letkeman lost consciousness after hitting his head on the steering wheel.
“When I came to, I was in such a confusion that I didn’t even realize what happened. I just see nothing but darkness and fire coming from in front of me. I thought I died on impact and was in hell. But I just sat there and really started trying to connect my thoughts, realizing I was still in the truck. Then I start focusing on the fire. I started getting myself together to get out. The door wasn’t opening. Smoke was coming through the vent. I’m really putting my shoulder into it to get the door open,” he recalled.
“Then I realized I wasn’t moving and felt the pain coming through. How do I get out now? So when I do have the door open, I use the momentum of it to pull myself out. Both legs weren’t working, so I fell over and face-planted in the ditch. Then I’m sliding underneath the truck. The whole time I’m trying to climb out, I realize I’m on my front face and my leg is in more and more pain.”
Eventually, he pulled himself up onto the flat gravel, lying on his side. He realized that his jacket and phone were still in the truck but there was no way he was going to try to go back for them. He glanced down at his body and saw that his right leg was in much worse shape than the left.
“That’s when I realized how much pain I was in. I only looked at it for a short amount of time because I didn’t want to scare myself too much. It looked like a literal hand coming out of my knee because of how broken it was,” he said.
“I was so distracted that I didn’t realize that my ankle was turned around, dislocated. This leg was just brutalized. I did not look at it again after that.”
He heard a bunch of popping noises and became fearful that the truck would blow up. So he lay down on his side with his left leg propped on top of the right leg and he used his arm to drag himself over the gravel towards the house in the far distance.
“I see the truck on fire and it’s getting bigger and bigger. I was either getting myself help or I’m dying here — and the second option was not an option,” he said.
“Randy thankfully came by or I would have still been struggling there. When he did stop by, it was the exact time when I heard coyotes coming a lot closer so fear really started settling in. I didn’t have my coat so the cold is really starting to settle in on me too. The second I saw him stop, I thought, ‘OK, help might be here. Just get yourself together, sit upright and wave him down.’ But there was too much tall grass where I was sitting and I didn’t quite get myself upright to be able to be seen — but he called 911 anyways.”
It seems meant to be that Van Wyk was driving in the right place at the right time. He had woken up from a deep sleep at about 2 a.m. at his home on Olde Cramb Farm on Road 75 North. He felt a strong urge to check on his cattle at their family’s Teulon farm.
“I felt God was nudging me to go to Teulon. I tossed and turned for a while and was almost asleep again when all of a sudden I was wide awake,” Van Wyk said.
“At 3 a.m., I got up and was getting dressed. I woke my wife and said ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I’m being led to the Teulon farm.’”
So he got in his truck and drove out to their cattle farm in the middle of the night.
“I hung around there for a while and I could see no reason why I was to be out there,” he said.
“That’s when I went back towards Stonewall and came upon the burning truck and Colton on the ground and I called 911.”
The ambulance drove down the driveway and Letkeman managed to pull himself upright.
“I put my hands way up in the air this time so I’m making sure I’m getting seen.
Then everything started coming to me — I’m really cold and in so much pain. How did I even make it this far?” he asked himself.
“Then I just started trembling so much that I couldn’t move anymore. Even after I’m in the ambulance, they put a warm blanket on me but because of the shock, I didn’t stop shivering for an hour after I was in the hospital.”
He underwent a 7.5-hour surgery and spent the next two weeks in the hospital where doctors mended his broken body with 10 staples and 52 stitches in his legs, along with a rod and four pins. On his left side, he had a broken and dislocated ankle, a broken tibia, a broken kneecap (along with the tendon underneath) and a broken femur. On his right side, he had a broken knee, a torn ligament and a hairline fracture in his ankle.
Meanwhile, Letkeman had missed a much-anticipated family brunch, which was out of character for him. At first, his mom Bernice was a bit miffed that he didn’t show up until she realized she couldn’t get a hold of him. He wasn’t answering his phone and his friends didn’t know where he was. She called the Winnipeg police, who advised her to start calling hospitals. She found him at Health Sciences Centre and heard that he’d been in an accident.
“If Randy hadn’t have come along, it would have gotten too cold and I’m worried that he would have never made it to the house,” she said, who also expressed gratitude to the Teulon Rockwood Fire Department for their life-saving response. “We are just so blessed that Randy came along.”
Now that he’s back at home, Letkeman is learning how to manoeuvre in a wheelchair around his house, which his sister and friends rearranged for accessibility. One week before the accident, he had achieved his Level 4 apprenticeship in cabinet-making with plans to continue working at his parents’ business, The Original Cabinet Shop in Stonewall. However, those plans are on hold for now during his recovery.
And when he looks back on the harrowing night, Letkeman is beyond grateful to Van Wyk for stopping to help him.
“I’m lucky to be alive,” he said. “It was a terrifying experience.”
