Accidental Killers

What happens after you unintentionally cause a death? Shame, secrecy, sorrow and a severe lack of resources mean those who take a life often feel as though they’ve lost theirs, too.

- Alexandra English

Theresa Ruf didn’t mean for it to happen. She didn’t see the man until after she hit him; even then, she saw the blood and the crumpled motorcycle first. The 42-year-old had been driving home in Illinois one evening in June 2012 when the sun blinded her at the exact moment he slowed to turn into his driveway. At the wheel of her SUV, she felt “a strange impact” and pulled over. She tried to staunch his wounds with her clothing until help arrived. Another driver rushed over and pulled her away. He started to pray — not for the man on the road, but for her: “‘God, protect her; God, give her strength,’” she recalls. “At that point, I completely lost it. [When I heard] him praying for me, I knew the man wouldn’t make it.”

For three days, Ruf hid in a walk-in closet. It was the only way to drown out the sound of traffic, motorcycles especially. She didn’t sleep, she didn’t eat; her husband was at a loss. “I had continual night terrors and flashbacks when I would drift off, and I would wake up screaming,” she says. The details wouldn’t stop coming: she closed her eyes and saw the road, the man lying on it. “When I was awake, I was constantly crying.” Her husband took her to the emergency room, where she was admitted into a psychiatric facility. She spent six days in a suicide ward where she says no one could explain what was happening to her.