Motorcycle Guardian

This event happened to me on October 31, 1996. I was living in São Paulo, Brazil at the time and had to make a day trip to Rio de Janeiro. The flight is very quick, about 45 minutes and there is something called Ponte Aérea from the central airport in São Paulo (Congonhas) to Rio. Every 15 minutes there is a flight leaving and you don’t have to board a plane from a specific airline.

I wanted to arrive in Rio before 11AM and the travel time form my house was about an hour. I was on a bad traffic jam at about 6:15AM and it’s moving 10 miles an hour. When I was about halfway there, I saw this motorcyclist weaving between the cars. He is going really slow. When he got to the side of my car, his motorcycle just flipped, apparently for no reason. There was a big oil spill on the ground and the bike lost traction. I had the windows rolled down as it wasn’t a particularly warm day and I asked him if he was OK.

“I think I broke my arm on the fall. Can you help me get the bike up and on to that gas station?” pointing to a nearby Shell gas station. I got out of the car and helped him out. He talked to the Manager at the gas station and the guy let him chain the bike in a corner to fetch later.

At this point, I looked at his arm. It had 2 elbows! He had a compound fracture and it looked nasty even under the leather jacket. I told him ”Get in the car, your arm looks awful. I will take you to the ER“. He got in the car. Amazingly he was smiling and didn’t seem to be in any pain at all, he was probably going into shock. Then he asked me: “Could you take me to Hospital São Luís? I have a great friend there who can help me”. Hospital São Luís was close to my home. I looked at the clock and it was almost 8AM by then. I decided I had to help Gabriel, which he told me was his name.

I drove him to the hospital and took him to the ER entrance. They came for him with a wheelchair. At that point he told me “Sorry for the inconvenience man, it just wasn’t your time yet, not for a while”. We said good byes and I gave him my number in case he needed me for the insurance. I didn’t really make anything of what he just said about not being my time yet.

It was almost 11AM when I left the hospital so I decided to go home instead of trying the airport. I got home after 30 more minutes of intense traffic and called the guys that I was supposed to meet in Rio. Luis Paulo picked up the phone and told me “David, thank God, you are alive!”

I replied: “Yes I had to help a guy who had an accident with a bike and broke his arm. It just got too late. What do you mean I am alive?”.

Luis Paulo, really excited told me “Turn the TV on man, there was an accident with an airplane leaving Congonhas to Galeão this morning. We were all afraid you were in it”.

I turned the TV on and saw the horrendous crash. The airplane on Flight TAM-402 fell on top of a neighborhood, killing 99 people, everyone on the plane plus 3 people on the ground.

Looking back at all of it I understood exactly what Gabriel said “it just wasn’t your time yet, not for a while”.

David Almeida, May 14 2015

P.S. I have decided to post no pictures of this accident in respect to the 99 victims.